Lose Your Life!

Books for Sale!

2012-01-20T12:57:00.000-08:00

I would like to purchase some new books, so I'm trying to cull through and get rid of some titles. My prices do not include shipping, but I'll be as reasonable as possible. If you're interested or if you have any questions, please send me an email - andrewsilva80@gmail.com.

The Ministry of Christ Throughout Palestine, in Jerusalem, and to the Ends of the Earth by: Francis Breisch, Jr. (Hardcover) $5.00

Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them by: Thom S. Ranier (Hardcover) $6.00

The Millennium by: Loraine Boettner (Hardcover) $7.00

The Message of 1 Peter by: Ed Clowney (The Bible Speaks Today Commentary Series) $8.00

Don’t Stop Believing Why Living Like Jesus Is Not Enough by: Michael Wittmer $5.00

Women’s Ministry in the Local Church by: J. Ligon Duncan & Susan Hunt $5.00

Christian Beliefs by: Wayne Grudem $5.00

Let it Begin With Me: Spurgeon on Revival $5.00

Growing in the Spirit by: DM Lloyd-Jones $7.00 (hardcover)

The Heart of the Gospel by: Lloyd-Jones $10.00 (hardcover)

Joy Unspeakable by: Lloyd-Jones $7.00

The True Christian by: J.C. Ryle $7.00 (hardcover)

God The Redeemer by: J.M. Boice $8.00

Charisma vs Charismania by: Chuck Smith $4.00

Growing Wise in Family Life by: Charles Swindoll $4.00 (Hardcover)

Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology by: William Dembski $7.00 (hardcover)

Humility: True Greatness by: C.J. Mahaney (hardcover) $5.00

Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God by: Mahaney (hardcover) $5.00

The Love of God by: John MacArthur $5.00

Hard to Believe by: MacArthur $6.00

Faith Works – The Gospel According to the Apostles by: MacArthur $6.00

Guidelines for Singleness and Marriage by: MacArthur $3.00

The Gospel According to Jesus by: MacArthur $5.00

On the Genealogy of Morals by: F. Nietzsche $5.00

Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology by: Thomas Morris $7.00

(the following three titles are heavier textbooks and will cost a few dollars more to ship)

Reason & Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy by: J. Feinberg & R. Shafer-Landau $10 (hardcover)

Twenty Questions:An Introduction to Philosophy by: G.Bowie, M.Michaels, & R.Solomon $10

The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy 4th Ed by:Norman Melchert $10 (hardcover)

Monday Off!

2012-01-17T11:26:00.000-08:00

Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr day so everyone except poor Devin, had the day off! What do you do when everyone's off and the weather's nice? Why, go to the zoo and then have a cook-out of course! By the way, I know what you're thinking...it's mid January, but remember we live in Texas friends, so the weather yesterday was sunny (a bit windy) but the high got up to almost 70!

Here are some fun pics from our zoo trip!

How cute is this aqua family!

They have a little train that drives you around the zoo for about 10-15 minutes. Of course Aikman loves it, so he always has to ride.

There is a concrete pier that you can walk out on over the lake. They also have these little pellets you can buy for a quarter to feed the ducks and catfish.

It's tough to see but above are the catfish. They literally swarm to the food and you get to witness a feeding frenzy!

This is the train coming at us from far-away.

That's a real-life cobra above! I share Aikman's sentiment upon viewing it - "ewww!"

After the zoo we decided to go by and visit my dad's grave. His birthday was Sunday, so we were celebrating him today.

After the cemetery, we went home for a quick nap and then everyone came over to our house around 3:30 for dinner! We grilled hamburgers and sausage and had all the fixings! We even made a carrot-cake in honor of my dad, since it was his favorite. Unfortunately I was too busy eating and neglected to get any pics of the food, but trust me it was goooood!

Lunch Photo Op

2012-01-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

Went to lunch at Olive Garden the other day...great photographs ensued...

Garlic Lime Chicken

2012-01-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start sharing some recipes here on the blog. First up today, garlic lime chicken. I have to give credit where credit is due: I found the recipe here. It was so simple to make, but tasted amazing!

If you want to give it a try yourself, here's the recipe:

3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons lime juice

1. In a small bowl, mix together salt, black pepper, cayenne, paprika, 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder, onion powder, thyme and parsley. Sprinkle spice mixture generously on both sides of chicken breasts.
2. Heat butter and olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Saute chicken until golden brown, about 6 minutes on each side. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons garlic powder and lime juice. Cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently to coat evenly with sauce.

2 Months!

2012-01-12T10:10:00.000-08:00

Today is my sweet man's two month birthday!

Here are some pics from his one month birthday:

And these taken today:

Can you see a difference? And yes, Jenny and I plan on doing this every month up until he's a year and then we'll see. We might keep doing it or maybe just every six months. Be sure to check back around the 12th of each month for new pics! Thanks to Sarah for this great idea!

Doctor Visit

2012-01-07T13:07:00.000-08:00

There's been quite a bit of sickness going around Abilene, including Adrian's cousins and myself. I went to the doctor Wednesday afternoon and was diagnosed with a sinus infection. Adrian had a bit of a stuffy nose and we were concerned that he might come down with something, so Thursday we scheduled to take him to see his pediatrician. Doctor said there was definitely some congestion up in that sweet little nose, but the good news was that he didn't see or hear anything bad enough to prescribe meds. He told us to just monitor the little guy and be sure he didn't get worse. (Happy to report as of this writing on Sunday night, he is doing great!) Adrian did get weighed and tipped the scales at 14.3 pounds! Big man didn't get his length measured but we should find that out when he goes back for his two month check-up on the 24th of this month. Here are a few photos of Adrian laying on the doctor's table.

When the doctor was examining Adrian, Adrian just kept staring right at the doc and cooing up a storm. The doctor actually remarked, "Wow, he really holds his gaze well. That's quite good for a baby his age." Hello! Did you hear that? My boy hold his gaze well! In all seriousness, Jenny and I are so thankful unto God for our healthy baby boy.

Impromptu Fried Pickle Cook-off

2012-01-07T13:04:00.000-08:00

If any of my friends have or have ever had a baby, then you know that routine sleep goes out the window for the first few months! This means being wide awake at 4:00am is not out of the ordinary. So what do you do when you and your spouse are up at four in the morning? Have an impromptu fried pickle cook-off of course!

I'm not even sure how it came up, but I was awake and craving fried pickles (am I pregnant?) I decided to do a quick search for some recipes to see how easy it would be. When Jenny inquired as to what I was doing, and I explained to her, she confessed that just the other day she too thought about making fried pickles! Well, obviously if both of us were thinking about them, then it was settled...we'd have to make some!

I found two recipes that I thought had potential to be good. Since we couldn't decide which to try, we concluded we'd both make one and see which we liked better!

Here's the recipe Jenny went with:

1 pint dill pickles , slicedand undrained

1 large egg , beaten

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour ,plus

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon groundred pepper

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon paprika

hot sauce

vegetable oil(for frying)

Directions:

1 Drain pickles,reserving 2/3 cup pickle juice.

2Press pickles between paper towels.

3Combinepickle juice, egg, 1 Tbsp flour and hot sauce(to taste). Stir well and setaside.

4Combineremaining flour with red pepper, garlic powder, salt and paprika. Blend well.

5Dippickles in egg mixture then in flour mixture.

6Frycoated pickles in 375F oil until golden brown.

7Drainon paper towels.

And here is the recipe I used:

8 dill pickles
1/2 cup flour
1 1/4 tablespoons black pepper
1/4 cup beer
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons garlic salt
1 1/4 tablespoons cayenne pepper
3 dashes hot pepper sauce
oil (for deep frying)
Directions:
1Cut dill pickles in slices as thick as a silver dollar.
2Mix together the remaining ingredients except the oil to form a batter.
3Dip the pickle slices in the batter and quickly fry in oil heated to 375 degrees until pickles float to the top, about 4 minutes.

If anyone is interested in trying these, I would note that 1/4 cup of beer was far too little. My batter was clumpy and not capable of having anything dipped into it. I added at least another 1/4 cup but I think it was even more than that. I just added beer until the batter was a consistency of, well, batter.

So here are some difference in the recipes: First, I used the big, whole pickles from the jar on the right, so of course, I sliced mine by hand and they were thicker than Jenny's pre-made slices pictured on the left.

Another difference is that Jenny's cooking process was far more involved. It took her almost twice as long to prepare hers than mine, mostly because of the double dipping involved with the wet and dry batters. Mine were extremely easy. I just threw my pickles slices into my batter, coated them well, and then transferred them into the frying pan! We don't have a cooking thermometer, so I have no idea how hot our oil was, but it only took about a minute and half for mine to fry. We did turn the heat down a bit because, although they came out fine, I thought that was a bit fast for them to cook.

And here's the finished products! As you can see, mine below were darker and thicker. This has nothing to do with them being overcooked, it's just that my batter was thicker and darker from the start.

Jenny's, below, came out looking more like the "traditional" fried-pickles you'd get at a restaurant. And I guess, I'll admit they are a bit "cleaner" looking.

So now the question that everyone wants to know...which tasted better?!! Well I have to say both were very good in my opinion. The biggest differences were not so much in the batters used, but in the pickles used. Mine were definitely more sour or stronger pickle tasting if you will, so if you like subtle pickle taste, then I'd recommend using the pre-sliced pickle chips.

As for the batters, both had a little hint of a kick to them, but mine were a bit more spicy. I liked that I could definitely taste the beer flavor in my batter. It almost reminded me of a batter you'd taste of beer-battered fish or something. Jenny's were more light tasting and not only did they look like the traditional fried pickles from a restaurant, they tasted more like them too.

In the end, we each voted and it was a tie! I preferred mine and Jenny preferred hers! (Shocker) We definitely needed an impartial third party to break the tie, so perhaps one of my readers could make these and let me know your thoughts. All in all, it was a fun way to pass an hour during the middle of the night.

Adrian Picture Update

2012-01-04T11:43:00.000-08:00

Here are some random photos of Adrian taken during the last week.

He wanted to test out the mommy and daddy's "big" bed. I think he looks so cute tucked in!

Here he is "wearing" daddy's t-shirt. It's still a little big on him.

This last picture was taken right as he toppled over. Lol.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

The Silva's and Anderson's rang in 2012 the best way we knew how - eating with family! Sarah cooked some amazing pepperoni rolls and Jenny made her famous chili.

Pippa tested out big brother's Buzz car.

Sarah and Jenny prepping snacks.

Getting ready to countdown the ball drop.

3, 2, 1...Happy New Year!

Here's hoping you have a great 2012!

Goals for 2012

2011-12-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I reviewed my 2011 goals and saw that while I came up short on some, I did accomplish others. I think setting goals for oneself is a good thing, so as promised, here are my goals for 2012.

Be a better husband to Jenny - Yes, I am fully aware that this is the exact same goal I had last year, but I truly believe it will be a lifelong goal for me. I will never truly love and serve Jenny as I should, but I shall continually strive to bless her in our marriage.
Be a godly father to Adrian - In 2011, the Lord graciously blessed Jenny and I with a beautiful little boy. I take the responsibility of being a father extremely seriously. I believe it is a most high calling that God gives to men, right up there with being a husband. In order to be a godly father, I want to model godly behavior to my son, teach him the gospel and the word of God, and love him unconditionally, including lovingly disciplining him.
Be consistent with family devotionals - This goal directly plays off of my previous two. I fully believe that father's are called to lead their families in daily times with the Lord. Since Adrian has been born, we've been adjusting to life with a baby. Now that we are settling in, I have no excuse not to find a few minutes each day to sing, pray, and read scripture with my family. I don't want a single day to pass where we don't do these.
Begin writing - I've long had aspirations to write a book, it just always seems like such a monumental task. I have some ideas that I think would make good books, I just am not sure if I'm the one to author them! I can't say that I'll write a book this year (or that I will ever) but I think this year I should at least start formulating some thoughts and getting them down on paper, er... screen.
Pray for others - I'd really like to revitalize my prayer life to better pray for my family, my church family, my friends, and those in need. I truly believe in the power of prayer (James 5:16) and I desire nothing more to see God glorified in the lives of those I love.

In a nutshell, those are some of my goals for 2012. As always, I know my blog readers will keep me accountable! I look forward to reporting back at the end of 2012, Lord willing, to update how I did.

Adrian playing

2011-12-30T22:21:00.000-08:00

Christmas in Abilene

2011-12-30T13:05:00.000-08:00

After our Christmas celebration in Aubrey, Jenny and I headed back home to Abilene. We left Aubrey at 7:00pm on Saturday and we made great time getting home just a bit after 10:00pm. We actually went straight to the Anderson house to visit with everyone for a bit (and also to eat). Sarah had made a wonderful Mexican feast with chicken enchiladas (that were great!), rice, beans, tamales, salsa, and queso. Yes, we tore it up! We wanted to stay longer and Devin was mad at us for not staying to play a game with him, lol, but we had church in the morning so we left about midnight.

The next morning we woke up but we treated the morning like any other Sabbath morning. We got dressed and headed off to Sunday school and church. We had a lovely service as usual. Afterwards we promised the Anderson's that we'd head over as soon as we could, so we made a quick stop at home to let Austin out and to change into some comfy clothes. Then we headed to the Anderson's where we met them along with Pete and Phil. And this time I remembered my camera! Since I have so many pictures, I just made it into a slideshow. Enjoy!

2011 Goals - How'd I Do?

2011-12-30T08:40:00.000-08:00

At the very end of 2010, I wrote a post about some goals I would like to achieve in 2011. The nice thing about a blog is that you have a record of everything you post, so I can't weasel my way out of the ~~resolutions~~ goals I made for myself! You can view the original post here, but I made five goals for myself. They were:

1. Be a better husband to Jenny.
2. Put off inappropriate talk.
3. Read 52 Books
4. Teach more at church
5. Read through Calvin's Institutes

So let me review 2011 and see how I did...

1. Be a better husband to Jenny.
This one is difficult for me to assess myself, since Jenny would probably be more apt to answer, however in self-evaluating, I would say there are some areas that I did well at and others I am still growing in grace. I think I did well in serving Jenny during her pregnancy and her delivery. I did my best to make sure she didn't have to do much around the house and that she could just relax. I also was quick with the back rubs when she had pains. During her hospital stay and lengthy delivery, I did everything I could to make her feel loved and alleviate her pain. Some areas where I still struggle - patience. I still get frustrated easily over silly things at times. Also, I still say things that are not the most edifying to her, such as complain about how she did things. I will say that I want to continue to improve to be a better husband by the Lord's grace.

2. Put off inappropriate talk.
By far my worst habit is that I still swear at times. I've done it for so long, it's a tough one to break. Regrettably, I did not fare so well on this goal, but I am determined to pursue it.

3. Read 52 Books.
Talk about humbling. I failed miserably on this goal. I think at last count I was somewhere around 17 in July. Now I will say that it's not like I didn't read anymore after July. My reading consisted more of reading articles or parts of books. Also I was teaching a lot more, so I read through commentaries slowly. In the end though, I don't like to hear excuses, so I won't even make any here. I failed on this goal and it was one I really did want to accomplish. Bummer.

4. Teach more at church.
Finally a goal I accomplished! My pastor has essentially placed myself in a rotation with him for teaching Sunday school. This means we take turns teaching. It's not really a he takes one week and then I get the next and so on, but for example, we taught through the book of 1 Peter. He taught chapter one. Then I taught chapter two. It usually take us around 3-4 weeks to get through a chapter. Now we are working through the book Let the Reader Understand and in similar fashion, he taught chapter one and I just finished teaching chapter two. So as you can see I am getting some very consistent opportunities to teach, which is something I enjoy very much.

5. Read through Calvin's Institutes
I actually was doing pretty well on this goal as well. As you can see, I had read and blogged all the way through Chapter 1, Book 14 and I was enjoying it! The reason I stopped was because we started going through the book as a church on Sunday evenings. Of course, this is a tremendous blessing to be able to read and discuss with my church family. I do intend to pick back up in blogging on each chapter since we are almost caught up to where I left off.

So those were my goals for 2011. I would say I was about 50% successful in them, so depending on if you're an optimist or pessimist, I did well or I failed. Ha ha. I enjoyed doing this and I already have some ideas for goals for 2012. I will try to post those tomorrow on the last day of 2011, so check back then!

Christmas in Aubrey

2011-12-29T23:14:00.000-08:00

Having two sides of the family means getting to celebrate all major events twice! Since Christmas fell on the Lord's Day this year, it was imperative that Jenny and I be here in Abilene to attend worship services. For this reason, coupled with the fact that I'm still on vacation from work, we decided we'd celebrate Christmas with Jenny's family before Christmas. Jenny had a quick doctor's appointment on Wednesday morning, but we left right after. Here are some pics of little man on the road. And no, we don't let our infant son ride without a car seat or seatbelt. Ha ha. These two were snapped when we were stopped at a gas station.

Here's Adrian sitting in his vibrating seat at his Nana and Poppy's house. He's really starting to take notice of his toys and you can see his intense focus on that monkey (even if he is a little cross-eyed).

When we go visit Jenny's parents we always do our best to go to restaurants that we don't have in Abilene. One of our favorites is the burrito place Freebirds. They have great burritos that are really huge. They wrap them in foil and then one of Freebird's gimmicks is that many patrons make things out of their foil. Many of the foil creations are displayed all around the restaurant. I made this T-Rex below. We'll see if he's still waiting for me on the ledge next time we go through Denton.

Jenny made a heart, which she left on the railing and she also made Adrian this awesome bow tie, which we had to make him model, even if he was asleep.

Another great adventure we were fortunate to enjoy was to go to a gun range! Jenny and I have never been anti-gun people, but we've also never been those types that felt we needed an arsenal to protect us. However, with Jenny now staying home with Adrian and with my odd hours, we decided that we'd feel safer if we had a weapon in the house. Of course, we'd only feel safe if Jenny and I were completely comfortable using the gun, so we've made a couple of trips to a couple of gun ranges to learn proper gun safety and use. Here is Jenny shooting her dad's 9mm pistol.

And here's Jenny shooting her dad's 9mm carbine rifle.

Unfortunately, Jenny didn't get any video of me shooting, so you'll just have to take my word that I possess deadly accuracy. We both enjoy shooting the guns, and while we pray we'll never have to use them, I'm thankful that Jenny is willing to learn how to safely fire them.

Other than eating, shooting, and hanging out with family, Jenny and I were also blessed to have a little date night since Nana and Poppy were so generous to babysit for us. We decided to drive to Highland Village and go see Mission Impossible III. It was a fun movie and as much as we love our son, it's always nice to have a little alone time, just the two of us.

Of course that brings us to the main reason we made the trip (other than for Nana and Poppy and Grammy and Pa to love on Adrian) - to celebrate Christmas with the family! At this point, I have to admit that I really goofed up. I remembered to bring our camera with us, but I completely forgot to bring the memory card for the camera. Yup, that means exactly what you think it does - we had a camera that couldn't take any pictures, which is obviously a obsolete camera. Thankfully for us, we had our cell phone cameras, so all the pics are from my phone. While most of the pics were of decent quality, this is the reason that we didn't take as many pics as we would have liked. Anyway, here are our pics opening our gifts.

These are some of Adrian's gifts.

This is Adrian with his great-grandma.

Little grinch.

Strong Grip

2011-12-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

Look at this little guy grabbing onto his ring. Do we have a future gymnast on our hands? When it was finally time to get ready for bed, Jenny literally had to pry his little fingers off!

Gingerbread Houses

2011-12-18T03:12:00.000-08:00

Family Time is important. Everyone came over to our house Thursday night so we could build gingerbread houses!

Aikman just about ate two pieces of candy for every one piece he put on his house.

This one is the handiwork of yours truly.

This one was crafted by Devin.

Here is Sarah and Aikman's.

I can't get the picture to turn, but this is Phil's

Pete went with the Gingerbread skyscraper.

And last but certainly not least is precious Jenny's. Poor thing just couldn't get her walls to stay up, so I told her I imagined it was a gorgeous structure before the unfortunate tornado hit it.

Visit to See That One Guy

2011-12-14T22:03:00.001-08:00

Since we all know the modern day Santa Claus story is a lie, here are some pics of Adrian and his cousins visiting some stranger with a fake beard in a red suit.

Cousin Pippa (4 mos old); Stranger in red (I'd guess like 40); Adrian (exactly 4 wks); and cousin Aikman (2 yrs)

So if we hate Santa, why'd we let Adrian take a photo with him? Well it was a photo op, nothing more.

Here's video of the photo op. My apologies for my shaky camera work, but I was trying to take photos with the regular camera at the same time as filming. Oh, and just for the record, there was absolutely no crying by any of these three. Such good kids!

Adrian's Baptism Photos

2011-12-14T21:47:00.000-08:00

I wrote previously about why we baptized Adrian, but here are some pictures from the event. (You can click to enlarge)

My pastor and two of our elders

Adrian's actually not crying here, but yawning. He was mostly sleeping until he got wet.

The Silva Family

The Silva Family and Anderson Family (my siblings, bro-in-law, nephew, and niece)

The Clayton Family and Silva Family (my in-laws)

Adrian in His Swing

2011-12-14T06:44:00.001-08:00

Why I Chose to Have My Infant Son Baptized

2011-12-13T19:45:00.000-08:00

Recently Jenny and I had the privilege of having our infantson baptized. While there is no doubt in my mind that this decision was theright one, I have several beloved friends and family members that are notfamiliar with paedobaptism, or infant baptism. Because of this, I have decided to do my best to write a succinct poston why I believe infant baptism is scriptural and as such, should be practiced.I would like to note that there are so many resources that are far superior towhat I have written below and I openly acknowledge that I drew from these in mythoughts. I strongly recommend thatthose ignorant of infant baptism further study some or all of the followingresources to better understand the practice of infant baptism.

First, Dr. R. Scott Clark, a professor at WestminsterSeminary California has written a wonderful article titled, A ContemporaryReformed Defense of Infant Baptism. This article can be read free online here.

For a bit more thorough exposition, here are some books onthe subject:

Jesus Loves the Little Children: Why We Baptize Children by:Danny Hyde

To a Thousand Generations: Infant Baptism - Covenant Mercy to the Children of God by:Douglas Wilson

The Case forCovenantal Infant Baptism Edited by: Gregg Strawbridge

AsI have mentioned, I have done my best to give a brief summary of why Isubscribe to infant baptism. With that said, my “brief” summary ended up beingseveral paragraphs long. I hope you will still take the time to read throughthe entire post carefully. If you have to break the post up over a few reads, I’drather you do that than to skim over it and miss something important. One lastnote before starting…all my scripture references need simply be moused over andthe actual verse or passage will pop up on the screen. For example, mouse overJohn 3:16 and you see the actual verse. This is just an easy way to shortenthis post a bit by avoiding typing out all the scripture myself, so I encourageyou to take time to read and meditate on all the scripture references, eventhough I haven’t written them all out. Okay with all that out of the way, Ithink we’re ready to begin!

The starting point to properly understand infant baptism is by understanding the way God relates to His people – with covenants. The easiest way for me to introduce the idea of covenants in scripture is by referencing the Westminster Confession of Faith’s (WCF) section explaining God’s covenant with man. Chapter seven reads:

1. The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.

2. The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.

3. Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.

4. This covenant of grace is frequently set forth in Scripture by the name of a testament, in reference to the death of Jesus Christ the Testator, and to the everlasting inheritance, with all things belonging to it, therein bequeathed.

5. This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old testament.

6. Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.

As sections four and five above state, there are several places in scripture where God makes a covenant of grace with His people. We see that the first place God does this is in the garden with Adam after the fall (Gen 3:14-16). It should also be noted that the covenants have conditions upon them which must be met. As Dr. R. Scott Clark says in his article linked above, “The first [condition] is saving faith, which God works in us (Romans 4:3). The second [condition] is to make use of the covenant signs and seals.”

Let’s fast forward to Gen 17:10-14. Here we read that Godnot only tells Abraham to be circumcised but he tells him that “For thegenerations to come every male among you who is eight days old must becircumcised…” Essentially what happenedis the LORD gave a bloody mark as a sign to Abraham that he and his childrenbelonged to the LORD.

Jeremiah 31:31-32 shows us that just as God made acovenant with Abraham, he promised a new covenant to come later and this newcovenant is made in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 22:20). Since the promises of the covenant of grace have beenfulfilled in Jesus Christ, what are the implications of this? As sections five and six of WCF chapter sevenexplains, the ordinances in which the covenant is dispensed have now changed.To quote Dr. Clark again, “The old covenant was designed to direct attentionforward to the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. The old signs likePassover and circumcision along with the other bloody sacrifices and ceremonieshave been replaced. Yet we still live in covenantal arrangement with God, andthe bloody pictures of Christ have been replaced with bloodless signs(reminders) and seals.” At this point,I’m sure you’re thinking, “That’s all well and good, but what does this have todo with infant baptism?” Well, I’m gladyou asked!

Because Christ hasfulfilled the bloody signs and types of circumcision, it is no longer necessarythat God’s people actually physically be circumcised. Instead Scripture teachesthat, by faith, all believers have died with Christ. Scripture alsoteaches that if we have died with Christ by faith, then we have undergone thecurse implied by circumcision. In Col 2:11-12, we see that there is an indirectconnection between circumcision and baptism and that connection is ChristHimself. Circumcision pointed forward toChrist's death and baptism looks back to Christ's death. Let’s also look atActs 2:38-39. Dr. Clark explains below:

Acts 2:38-39 equates circumcision and baptism. In Acts 2:38 the Apostle Peter calls for repentance, faith in Christ and baptism by Jews who are hearing his preaching. In v.39 he gives the reason for this action: "the promise is to you and to your children, and all who are far off...." The Apostle Peter consciously uses the same formula in his preaching as the LORD himself used when he instituted the sign of circumcision in Genesis 17, which the Jews listening understood precisely.

Romans 4:1-8,13-25 teaches that Abraham was justified by grace alone, through faith alone and not by works and yet God required that Abraham take the sign (mark) of circumcision. Romans 4:11 says that circumcision was a sign and a seal of "the righteousness that he (Abraham) had by faith while he was still uncircumcised." Circumcision was a sign of God's covenantal relationship to Abraham and to Abraham's children, all who believe in Christ. The meaning of circumcision was spiritual and not just outward. Circumcision as a sign of faith and entrance into the covenant people as a member was also applied to children (Gen 17:10-14)…Because the promise of the covenant of grace, God is a God not only to adult believers, but also to their children. That is why, in 1 Corinthians 7:14, Paul said that children of believers are "holy." Paul deliberately used Old Covenant, ceremonial, language to teach the Corinthians that their children shouldn't be considered outside of the visible people of God. To use old covenant language, children of believers are "clean," and therefore have a right to share in the blessings of being a part of the visible people of God, including baptism.

At this point I’m sure many people have the obvious questions that come attached with the practice of infant baptism. First, many naturally assume that in baptizing infants, we paedobaptists either presume or expect baptismal regeneration or, we believe that baptism in itself saves. However, this is not the case at all. To explain, let’s back up and review what baptism does. Let’s go back to the WCF and read chapter 28, sections 1,5, and 6, which state:

1. Baptism is a sacrament of the new testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church; but also, to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life. Which sacrament is, by Christ's own appointment, to be continued in his church until the end of the world.

5. Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.

6. The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will, in his appointed time.

Section 1 explains that the sacrament of baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace between God and his people. As a sign, the covenant signs are visible reminders of the great act of redemption which God has accomplished. As a seal, they are God's way of separating his people from those in the world, and they give to us God's promise that, in example, as surely as we are washed by the water we are by faith washed by the blood of Christ. Just as in the preaching of the Word, the Holy Spirit strengthens our faith by the use of these covenant signs and seals.Since we view baptism as a sign and seal of God’s promise, we reject the belief that baptism automatically regenerates anyone. What we believe is that unbaptized, adult converts are to profess their faith before baptism, but the children of believers who received the sign in infancy profess their faith as soon as they are able. Both are responsible before God to be faithful to the grace represented by the sign and seal they have received. In other words, for the infant, while they may not have placed their faith in Christ at the time of their baptism, it’s a seal of God’s promise that someday they will. Again I quote Dr. Clark as he sums it up nicely when he states,

"Baptism is not an end in itself. Rather, it is only the beginning of a life of faith and faithful discipleship in Jesus. As Peter reminds, it is not baptism which saves. It is “...not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand-with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him” (1 Peter 3:20-21).Because sacraments are signs and seals, they do not, in themselves, save. They testify to God's grace, they point us to Christ, and seal to us his salvation. Just as circumcision did not save, neither does baptism."

The second question most often asked by those unfamiliar with infant baptism is “where does the bible command children to be baptized?” and the short answer is that it never does explicitly. But in reality the question isn’t a very good one simply because it assumes that which scripture does not. Asking where the bible commands children to be baptized first assumes that children were no longer to receive a covenant sign. As I hopefully explained above this is a notion that myself and other reformed Christians would reject. Another way to think of it is instead of asking where Scripture explicitly teaches infant baptism, instead ask the question, “Where does the bible reverse God's command to Abraham to administer the covenant sign and seal to children of believing parents?”

In conclusion, I hope that this brief post has at least given my readers an introduction as to the reason why I believe the bible teaches that baptism is not only for unbaptized adult converts, but also for the children of believing parents as well. The sacrament of baptism is a God-ordained sign and seal of God’s covenant of grace upon those who receive it.

I fully expect many of my friends to have further questions on infant baptism, just as I did when I first began investigating the subject. This is, of course, perfectly fine. I would encourage you to at least check out Dr. Clark’s article as I think it will do much to answer many questions. However, I also encourage you to contact me by leaving a comment, emailing me, or contacting me through Facebook and I will do my very best to answer your questions. I also fully expect many of my credobaptist (those who believe in only baptizing professing Christians) friends to struggle some with this doctrine. I know I certainly did when I first found out my church baptized children. I thought that only Roman Catholics baptized babies! (And for the record, reformed paedobaptism is absolutely not Roman Catholic paedobaptism). But again, I would encourage you to take the time to really study this out. Don’t make the mistake of simply believing something because “it’s just the way you’ve always done things”. Please don’t automatically reject infant baptism because it’s “weird” to you. I’m confident that paedobaptism is biblical and I pray that as you prayerfully and carefully study baptism, that in time, you will come to the same conclusion.

My Views on Christmas

2011-12-09T19:45:00.001-08:00

I originally wrote the following posts last year, but since Christmas is back, I'm bringing the posts back too!

In short, Jenny and I have chosen not to celebrate Christmas in our home. Many people upon hearing this are quite taken aback to find this out, since after all Christmas is a "Christian" holiday and we are Christians. Is this true though...is Christmas a Christian holiday? Should Christians celebrate it? Find out my answers in the following posts:

Part 1: Christmas and It's Origins
Part 2: To Celebrate or Not to Celebrate, that is the Question.
Part 3: Christmas Giving in Light of Scripture
Part 4: The Sin of Santa Claus

More Adrian!

2011-11-16T22:06:00.001-08:00

You know what this blog needs? More Adrian! Here are some more pics of our wonderful little man.

My two favorite people.

We are about to leave the hospital here and go home!

Kinda looks like he's chatting on the phone.

This is one of my favorites.

You can really see his "old man" hair in this pic - thicker on the sides and back and thinner on top.

Welcome to the World Baby Silva!

2011-11-13T05:55:00.001-08:00

Last night at 8:01pm I had the pleasure of welcoming my son, Adrian Maxwell Silva into the world! I will back up a bit and give the details on our day.

When I left off at the last post, the doctor had just broken Jenny's water. As I also mentioned she was given drugs to get labor kick-started and it worked! All throughout the day Jenny continually seemed to progress. She started the day dilated at 1 cm and throughout the course of the day, she progressed all the way to 7 cm at about 7:30pm. But the bad news was, that was also where she was at about 5:30. All throughout the day her body had been continually progressing, but for whatever reason, after about 5:30, everything seemed to come to a standstill. The doctor said it was most likely a sign that Jenny's body wasn't going to be able to naturally birth Adrian on her own. He had some concerns about Adrian being too big and getting stuck. Plus there were a few other factors, nothing serious, just more like potential concerns that could become an issue. Based on all that, our doctor recommended we go ahead with a c-section. Of course upon hearing this news, at first Jenny and I were somewhat disappointed, but after we prayed together we were completely at peace. We knew that God's perfect will would be done and our priority was baby and mama's safety, so we decided we would go ahead with the c-section. After routine prepping, we went back into the operating room. I was able to sit right beside Jenny and hold her hand throughout the process. She did wonderfully! It was only a few minutes of surgery and then I saw the doctor hold up my boy! They took him over to an area to be cleaned and so I left Jenny's side to see our son for the first time. After getting him breathing and checking all the vitals, they wheeled him to the nursery to further clean him and take all the measurements, which were 8 lbs 3.1 oz and 20.5 in long.

After that, it's pretty much just been us and family doting on our beautiful little man. Adrian and Jenny are both doing great! Of course, since Jenny had a c-section, she is extremely sore and will need to take it easy for a bit, but aside from that, she did wonderfully! I am so proud of my beautiful wife.

And now the moment everyone's been waiting for...the pictures!

Dad getting ready to go back for c-section

First pics of Adrian! He had literally just come out of the womb.

Doctor said he wanted to "pose" him for the camera

First time being held by Nana

And with Uncle Pete

proud Aunt Sarah

and Uncle Phil

And finally, Adrian with his mom and dad

Here he is getting his first bath

All dried off

And here is the sweet man all nestled in for the night.

That's all from his first day, but you can be sure more updates and more pics will follow! Thanks friends for all your love and prayers.

Adrian is...on the way!

2011-11-12T07:13:00.001-08:00

My too kind brother-in-law brought me my internet set-up so here is the first update from day one... right now it's 9:15am on Saturday and we've been at the hospital for about 16 hours. Jenny was administered meds to move her body along in the delivery process. Praise God, the meds worked as they were supposed to because this morning the nurse told us she could definitely see progress! Now it's mostly just a waiting game. Jenny is sleeping soundly as I type this. She has done such a good job! She is experiencing some pretty good contractions but she is handling everything well. I look forward to updating again later in the day and I anticipate the next update here will be Adrian's welcome to the world post! As always, you can follow my twitter feed for more current updates. Thanks for the prayers and keep them coming everyone!

Update: At about 9:40, doctor broke Jenny's water. She's now dilated to a three.

Just got checked in to the room.

Thankful for iPhones. Seriously, what did people do to pass the time before them?

Dad and Mom! (Dad looks pretty scary, but cut him slack he was taking this pic himself from an odd angle)

Nana and Poppy (Jenny's parents)

(l to r) my brother Phil, my sis Sarah, you know Jenny, and my aunt Jeanette saying a quick hello before we settled in for the night.

Doc gave specific orders to Jenny she couldn't eat after midnight, so we had to have a mini-feast at 11:30. You know how Silva's roll.

This was a middle of the night picture. If I remember correctly, approx 4:30am. We passed the night time by talking, praying, and watching old sitcoms on Nick at Nite. And of course a little sleep in between.

Adrian Countdown

2011-11-11T07:17:00.001-08:00

Today's the big day! I can't express how excited I am that this evening Jenny will be induced and our little boy will be here shortly! Here's the plan for today: I am at work right now. I told my boss I would work until noon. Jenny's parents are coming in to town today and they'll be here when I get off. Also Sarah and Devin are off today as well, so after I get off, we will all go have lunch together. After lunch, I need to go buy some cigars to hand out! Then I will head home to finish packing our overnight bag and then maybe a short nap before we head to the hospital at 5:00pm.

Now for those who are interested in updates, I plan on tweeting the entire process beginning when we arrive to the hospital. If you have a twitter account, then you need to follow me. If you don't have a twitter account, you can still read my updates here. My account is public so, all you need to do is to go to follow that link, and you'll see all the tweets I send out. If you don't want to do that, you can also see my tweets on the left hand side of this page, right under my picture.

Second, I am also going to be updating this blog of course! I still haven't found out if the hospital has wifi (hoping so). I am taking our laptop with us, so if there is internet access, then I will be able to update a lot sooner directly from the hospital. If there is no internet access, then you will just have to be patient and wait for a flurry of post and pictures when we get back home (anticipating Sunday afternoon/evening), so check back soon! Thanks for everyone's prayers!

Adrian Update - Good News!

2011-11-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

Well it's not the best news that he's here, but it's pretty close in that he will be here very soon! We went to our doctor yesterday and doc scheduled Jenny to be induced this Friday evening! We have to be at the hospital at 5:00pm and then everything will be administered to get Adrian moving along. He should be born Saturday. Please keep us in your prayers and I will certainly update when he arrives!

Babymoon

2011-11-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

As the days pass and Adrian's arrival creeps nearer, Jenny and I decided that last Friday night would be a perfect night for our Babymoon! Babymoon is essentially a married couples last night out on the town as a family of two before the arrival of the little one. As you can imagine, the addition of a baby completely changes your ability to go to dinner or a movie without planning ahead first so our Babymoon was our last "hurrah" as we celebrated our marriage.

First Jenny and I decided to go to a movie. The choices are pretty slim this time of year, but we decided on Moneyball, a film that had received great reviews. I thought it was great film and even though it was a sports film, it really had so much more to the story than just baseball, so Jenny enjoyed it as well. We went to the early show at 5:00, so we got out about 7:15pm, just in time to go grab some dinner!

For dinner, I wanted us to have something special, but I didn't want to go the normal route of meaning special to automatically equate to eating somewhere expensive (remember, we do have a baby on the way). I had read of a new Indian restaurant that opened in Abilene a few weeks back, so I figured we could try that! It was called Taj Mahal Indian Cuisine and it was great! I had the Tandoori grill, which is kind of an Indian take on fajitas. The dish had chicken, beef, and shrimp all seasoned with the Tandoori yogurt. The dish came with some delicious Indian rice and also naan bread. You'll have to google naan bread. If you ever watch many cooking shows, you've probably seen it before. It's the pita-like bread that's cooked on the side of an kiln type clay pot. Jenny chose a chicken curry dish, but it tasted nothing like Thai or Chinese curry. It was very good too! They also brought us some dipping sauces that I couldn't even begin to describe other than to say that the bright green one tasted great with the rice and the sweet one was great with the naan!

After dinner, we were stuffed so instead of going directly for dessert, we opted to make our way home to slip into some comfy clothes and to feed our pup dinner. We sat in the living room and we just talked about our life together and how excited we were to begin our new chapter of life together as well. After about an hour of letting our food settle, we ventured out for the last leg of Babymoon, which was dessert at Cold Stone Creamery. I got cake batter and sweet cream ice cream with white chocolate chips, twix pieces, and whipped cream. If it sounds ridiculously decadent, that's because it was! Jenny opted for the "Founders Favorite" which is sweet cream ice cream with brownies, almonds, caramel and chocolate sauce. It was a sweet ending to a sweet night! Although I'm sure we'll have date nights in the future, we'll always remember our Babymoon from before Adrian was born!

Adrian Update

2011-11-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jenny and I went to two doctor's appointments. I'm not sure if I've explained before but we have our normal doctor we are now visiting weekly and then we see a second doctor for all the sonograms because he has the good equipment.

First we had our appointment with the sonogram doctor. It's always exciting to see him because we get to see Adrian on screen! Sure enough the doctor said Adrian is looking big and strong and when I say that I mean literally. The doctor estimated him to weigh a good 8.5 pounds already and, depending on who you ask, we still have two weeks to go! (more on that in a minute) We also got to hear his heartbeat and the doctor said it was nice and strong. He gave us a few pictures, but I'm not posting them because to be perfectly honest, you can't tell what anything is in the pics. They are really just all blobs to me. Personally, I think it's a racket because the office offers paid sonogram pics, so I assume the plan is to not give you anything good so that you'll fork over the $150 for the quality pics.

Now onto the second appointment with our regular doctor. Jenny and I had high hopes for this appointment because when we went to see him two weeks ago, he told us he was looking to induce Jenny around the 5th or 6th. Well it turns out this time the doctor has now changed his mind (again). We've been given three different due dates and the most recent one was the 11th. Since Adrian is measuring so big, this is why he had told us he would induce a week early on the 5th/6th. Well now we were told that our due date isn't until the 18th. Ughhh! Talk about frustrating! I felt so badly for my sweet wife. She was so excited about seeing and holding our little man. Now to find out she has to continue to wait just crushed her. Our doctor told us we are still just in waiting mode. Jenny's body hasn't moved into the preparations for delivery yet, so inducing isn't even a possibility either. Even though I must admit some disappointment, I am also confident that Mr. Adrian will be born exactly the date and time that God has ordained. I know God's perfect will is being done for the labor and delivery and I am confident that everything will work out fine. Of course we are still praying and we covet any and all prayers. I'll be sure to update the next time we hear anything new!

New Carpet

2011-10-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a very generous gift from a certain someone and to the fact that we had some money left over from the purchase of our van, last week we were blessed to be able to purchase new carpet for the house! Enjoy the pics!

The not so fun part about getting new carpet is that you have to remove everything from the carpeted rooms. Here's basically all our bedrooms and one living room all crammed into the dining area!

Here's the gross old carpet.

The new pad...

And the new carpet! It's much, much nicer!

Thank you Lord for your gracious provision!

Clearing Some Myths Regarding Paedocommunion

2011-10-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

The following post is in direct response to the post, "Baptists Abusing Their Children?" by Fernando at the blog, "Reformed for His Glory". You may read the original post here.

Dear Brother Fernando,

Recently you wrote a blog post regarding a picture that you took offense to. Referring to that picture, your opening line of the post reads, “Such is the accusation by some of our paedobaptist brethren from pictures like the one above.” That statement is incorrect. Such is the accusation by one particular paedobaptist. If you believe that this particular man speaks out of arrogance or superiority, I won’t contend that point. However, this man does not represent all Presbyterians and in the next few paragraphs, I’d like to set some errors straight regarding Presbyterians. My main issue is with the last paragraph of your post, which I quote below:

Suffice it to say that we Baptists do not abuse our children. Frankly, we are not the ones telling our children they are members of the covenant while denying them a covenant privilege and command-a place at the Lord's Table (communion). We understand your view of the external/internal distinction, we just don't buy it. Baptism and communion go together. At least the Federal Vision and other paedobaptists are consistent in paedobaptism and paedocommunion.

Now I am not going to rehash the case for why we Presbyterians practice paedobaptism. I’m sure you’ve read and heard these arguments several times already. However, an argument that I don’t think you are familiar enough with is the paedocommunion position, or rather the lack of argument for paedocommunion. I think it terribly ignorant of you to attempt to liken our belief in paedobaptism to the belief in paedocommunion. True orthodox Presbyterians (and I mean that in the general sense, not just OPC saints) do not practice paedocommunion. To state further, Dr. Richard Bacon says,

not only is anti-paedocommunion "the classic reformed practice;" it has been the orthodox view of the entire western church, including Roman, Lutheran, Reformed and Baptist; it is the view of the Old Testament, of inter-testamental Judaism, of Christ and His apostles, of the patristic church until after 250 AD, and continues to be the view even of Karaite Jews, who broke away from Rabbinic tradition to follow a Jewish version of Sola Scriptura.

The reason the classic reformed practice is that of anti-paedocommunion can be found in1 Corinthians 11:28-29 which reads, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” Scripture clearly states that the Lord’s Supper is reserved for persons capable of examining themselves. Infants or very young children would not fall into this category and our historic confessions back this up. From the Westminster Larger Catechism:

Q. 171. How are they that receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper to prepare themselves before they come unto it?
A. They that receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper are, before they come, to prepare themselves thereunto, by examining themselves of their being in Christ, of their sins and wants; of the truth and measure of their knowledge, faith, repentance; love to God and the brethren, charity to all men, forgiving those that have done them wrong; of their desires after Christ, and of their new obedience; and by renewing the exercise of these graces, by serious meditation, and fervent prayer.

Q. 176. Wherein do the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper agree?
A. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper agree, in that the author of both is God; the spiritual part of both is Christ and his benefits; both are seals of the same covenant, are to be dispensed by ministers of the gospel, and by none other; and to be continued in the church of Christ until his second coming.

Q. 177. Wherein do the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper differ?
A. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper differ, in that baptism is to be administered but once, with water, to be a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ, and that even to infants; whereas the Lord's supper is to be administered often, in the elements of bread and wine, to represent and exhibit Christ as spiritual nourishment to the soul, and to confirm our continuance and growth in him, and that only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves.

Now, Brother Fernando, it appears at this point that you would deem us “inconsistent” for baptizing our infants, yet denying them participation in the Lord’s Supper. However, a proper understanding of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper will reveal there is no inconsistency to be found. Allow me to quote Dr. Nigel Lee:

Before Calvary - minors were never permitted to eat the meat of the Passover lamb. Since then - it is similarly impermissible for minors to eat of the Lord’s Supper which precisely in Christ’s Calvary week replaced that ancient sacrifice. In Holy Scripture, we are told that - at Calvary - Baptism replaced Circumcision. Romans 4:11-24; Galatians 3:16-29; Colossians 2:11-13. The Lord Himself declares that Circumcision was administered usually in infancy - just eight days after birth. Genesis 17:12f ; 21:4f ; Luke 2:21; Philippians 3:5f. God’s Word also teaches that the Lord’s Supper replaced sacrificing in general and the Holy Passover in particular. Luke 22:1-20; First Corinthians 5:6f ; Hebrews 10:1f. Yet such sacrificing and the Passover were only for catechized adults. Genesis 18:2,7,12,32f ; Exodus 12:3f,26f,37f,48f ; Numbers 9:2-14; First Chronicles 21:5; and Luke 2:40-47. So too is the Lord’s Supper. First Corinthians 11:27f ; 13:11f ;14:20; 16:13. Thus - Catechism before Communion! Hebrews 5:12-14; 6:1-2; 10:22-23; 13:10-17. Ancient Paedocommunionism was conceived in Paganism. Only later did it infiltrate into the Early-Medieval Church. It did so, through the magical syncretism between the Eastern Rites and Eastern Paganism, and also by way of Post-Christian Judaism. Yet, as such, it is totally averse and foreign to God’s infallible Word. As Rev. Professor Dr. John Calvin remarks in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (IV:15:30): “The Supper is intended for those of riper years.... He does not admit all to partake of the Supper - but confines it to those who are fit to discern the body and blood of the Lord.... ‘He who eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body’ [First Corinthians 11:29].... Why should we offer poison - to our young children? The Passover for which the Supper is substituted...was duly eaten only by those who were of age sufficient to ask the meaning of it. Exodus 12:26.”

You see the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not related in the same way that you would imply them to be. Whereas baptism replaces circumcision and the Lord’s Supper replaces the Passover meal, the difference is that you will not find any example in scripture where infants or young children partook of the Passover meal. Herein lies the disconnect. What we find in both the OT and the NT is that the Passover meal and now the Lord’s Supper are reserved for those that are able to examine themselves and make a credible profession of faith. Futhermore, we Presbyterians find paedocommunion to be not only unscriptural but also leading to problems within the church. For example, as Pastor Robert Truelove points out,

“…it is one thing to TREAT our covenant children as 'Christians'; training and nuturing them in the Scriptures and the covenant into which they were born; looking for them to come to a 'full assurance of faith' without their assuming it to be true of them because Dad and the church said so. Alternatively...it is another thing to ASSUME that the children of Christians ARE ACTUALLY regenerate and train them that this is the case. Paedocommunion is doing exactly this! By giving our very young children the Supper, we are telling them, in effect, that they are salvifically in Christ.”

I’m sure in your studies of paedobaptism that you’ve come to the understanding that, while we believe our babies and young children to be part of the covenant of grace, we do not presume them to be actually regenerate. To do so would be serious error and cause much confusion within the body of Christ.

In conclusion, Presbyterian brethren firmly believe that the sacrament of baptism belongs not only to believers, but also to their children. Orthodox Presbyterian brethren also believe that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is not intended for infants or children, but reserved for those who been examined by the church and have given a profession a faith. We do not see this as being inconsistent, because the scriptures teach that circumcision was administered to infants, therefore as baptism replaces circumcision as a sign of the covenant, baptism should also be administered to infants. However, the Passover meal in the OT was not administered to infants, and neither does the NT give command or example that the Lord’s Supper is to be administered to infants. In fact what we do read in the NT is an opposite command – that the Lord’ Supper is reserved for those who would profess faith and examine themselves (1 Cor 11:28-29). Lastly, it should be noted that those who choose to practice paedocommunion seem to do so in an effort to be “consistent” above being Biblical, an effort we wholeheartedly eschew.

For further study:
Paedocommunionism versus Protestantism (Why Baptized Children Need Catechizing Before First Communing Not Prior to Puberty) by: Dr. Nigel Lee

What Mean Ye? By: Dr. Richard Bacon

Our New Van

2011-10-14T14:35:00.000-07:00

As promised, here's our new minivan!

Sorry I couldn't drag out the suspense. But there's really a great story behind us being able to purchase this new vehicle, so I'd like to share some back story if I may. It really goes back to the end of 2010. Jenny and I had been praying and desiring to begin our family. We wanted her to be pregnant, but a few health issues prevented that at the time. Nonetheless, we weren't discouraged and knew that it would be in God's perfect timing. In our planning ahead for our new family we realized we would need to make two major changes to accommodate a bigger family than just the two of us. First, we would need a bigger house. As many of you know the Lord graciously worked that situation out when we inherited my parent's home after my mom passed away. Second, we knew we'd need a bigger vehicle. For those that may not know, before meeting I drove a 2001 Saturn SL and Jenny drove a 1999 Pontiac Firebird. If anyone knows anything about cars, you'll know that neither of those two vehicles are conducive to hauling around a baby or any more kids down the road. So we decided we would begin saving for a new vehicle back around Dec 2010. Our plan was that we'd take some out of Jenny's check each time she got paid (twice a month) and then in a year (end of 2011), we'd have saved a significant amount of money that we could couple with the proceeds of selling Jenny's Firebird to buy a new family vehicle with cash. The plan was going well and we were faithful to our commitment. Then God changed our plan up a bit. In March, we found out we were pregnant! It looked like we'd need that vehicle a bit sooner than we'd originally planned!

Thankfully, the human gestation period is nine months, so we did still have a few more months to keep saving toward our vehicle. As the months went buy we began to more seriously consider what kind of vehicle we wanted to get. I've always been of the mindset that a couple doesn't need to buy a brand new minivan or a huge SUV just because they have their first kid. I mean, it's just one baby and a car seat can fit in the backseat of a decent sized four door sedan, right? So that is what we initially considered. We looked at the Honda Accord, Chevy Impala, and a few other nice sedans. But as the search went on, one day Jenny came to me and explained that what we really needed was a minivan. Her reasons were simple: 1) We aren't going to have the luxury of buying another new vehicle for several years. Whatever we got needed to last hopefully a good 10 years. Which brings us to point two. 2) We are hoping to have more than one kid. We'd love to have several more, but even if we only have one more, a sedan is pretty much maxed out at four people. Add in all the kiddo's stuff you have to tow around (strollers, playpens, diaper bags, etc) and a car can get pretty cramped pretty quickly. So that's when we decided we'd look to buy a minivan. Besides, minivans are pretty cool now a days! They have lots of great features and they even look pretty snazzy!

So we continued to save and we continued to research. Another key to buying our new van would be first selling the Firebird. As September rolled around, I decided it was time to really get serious and I listed the Firebird for sale on Craigslist and AutoTrader.com. I thought surely I'd get so many hits from AutoTrader, after all, that was where Jenny and I seemed to have the most luck looking for minivans. But guess how many contacts I actually got from AutoTrader? Zip. Zero. Zilch. Not a single one! Thankfully, good 'ole free Craigslist came through. After several emails and phone calls of minimal interest, we finally got a call from a lady who wanted to buy it for her high school daughter. After a test-drive by her, everything was a go, and she bought the Firebird for our asking price!

Now that we had all the cash in hand to make our purchase (and now that we were down to one vehicle) we really intensified our search with full intentions of finding and purchasing a vehicle. Long story short, we found a few minivans we liked, but the one we liked most of all was this red one, a 2007 Chrysler Town & Country, in Richardson (suburb of Dallas/Ft.Worth). As my earlier post stated, Jenny was already going out of town that weekend for one of her baby showers so we decided she would stop by the dealership and see if we could get us a van!

I was so proud of Jenny. Saturday her family and her drove out to the dealership. I had been talking to one of the salesman over the phone, but couldn't make the trip due to work. Jenny ended up haggling the owner of the dealership down on the price. She played some hardball and said it was either her price or she walked. Based on what she told me, the salesman didn't seem happy, but he finally agreed to our price! The van was ours! Since I had taken Jenny halfway to meet her parents, she didn't have a vehicle so she was able to just drive the van back home.

I love our new van! Not only does it meet our needs functionally, but I think it looks great and it's really fun to drive. Yes, I just said a minivan is fun to drive. I guess I'm really getting into this whole dad thing! Ha ha.

Here are some pics.

The two middle seats are bucket seats just like the front. The back seat is a bench. In the below photo, the back seat is folded down because Jenny had so much stuff from her shower to bring home!

The front seats have great space. Whereas before, my head would touch the ceiling in both the Saturn and Firebird, I don't have that problem anymore!

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the back is actually deep, not flush with the rest of the floor. This of course allows for much for storage space.

Sonogram at 35 Weeks

2011-10-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jenny and I had a sonogram appointment to see how Adrian's measuring up (literally). Thanks be to God, because the doctor said everything looked wonderful! Our son has a good heartbeat and he's growing big and strong. Based on measurements, the doctor estimated him to weigh 6 lbs 7 ozs and measure 18 inches long. He's still got some growing to do, so he should easily weigh over 8 lbs in another three to four weeks. Here are some pics we were given. In the first one you can see his foot and in the second one, although I have no idea how they tell, she told us that she could see that he's got some hair!

Everybody's Working for the Weekend

2011-10-10T03:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a little update on our weekend. I actually need to back up to last Thursday because I failed to post about some exciting news.

So last Thursday Jenny and I had an appointment with our doctor. In the past there had been some confusion about when our actual due date was going to be. Our doctor originally gave one date, then another doctor we have been seeing for sonograms gave a different date, and then our doctor changed the last date he'd given us to a new one! Well Jenny and I began praying about all this confusion and we trusted that the Lord would work everything out smoothly without stressing anyone out (and by anyone I mean my precious Jenny...hee hee). So when we met with our doctor on Thursday he confirmed our due date of 11/11/11, which was good news but it didn't stop there. We also had some concerns about having to do a c-section simply because Adrian was measuring large. We didn't want a c-section simply because we'd like to have several more children and I've heard that c-sections can cause problems with later births. Our concerns were alleviated in that area too when the doc said that he would most likely induce Jenny a week early since Adrian was measuring ahead! He said we'd probably shoot for around the 5th or 6th of November for our son to be born! How exciting!

Friday Jenny got off work at 4:15pm and I drove her half way to meet her dad. He picked her up about Mineral Wells so that neither of us would have to drive the whole trip. Oh, and the reason why Jenny couldn't drive herself....because we were hoping she'd be coming home in a new vehicle for us! And I'm happy to report that she will be this morning!

Saturday Jenny and her family drove to a dealership and Jenny bought us a new vehicle! I will leave you in suspense on what we got because I still haven't seen the vehicle (other than pics) and I want to take some more pics to share. So look for a post on our new vehicle coming soon! Saturday night I was generously invited over to have dinner with the Anderson's (okay so I kind of invited myself). Sarah made a delicious queso with sausage and we also ordered hamburgers from Steak Express. We hung out a bit and watched a little football as best we could as the dish went out periodically due to the weather. More on that in a minute. After laughing at Aikman and stuffing my belly, I went home to take a nap since I am working midnights.

Back to Jenny's trip out of town...she left Friday afternoon to go spend some time with her family, to get us a new vehicle and lastly to enjoy a baby shower with her friends and family back home. This was on Sunday afternoon. This is now the third baby shower she's had (first was her work, second was given by Sarah for friends/family here) and she still has another on the 22nd of this month given by our church! We are truly blessed! My Sunday was divided up between church and sleeping.

The other big news that occured this weekend is that it rained. And when I say it rained, I mean it RAINED, as in 3.68 inches of record setting rain in less than 24 hours. To put that into perspective including this weekends rain, Abilene is now at 14.4 inches this year. That means we received approximately 1/4 of our total year's rain in two days! I kid you not, it started raining about 1:00pm Saturday and didn't stop until about 8:00am Sunday. Here is an article from the Abilene Reporter News about the precipitation we received.

That brings me to today. It's Monday morning and Jenny will be coming home this morning. She was able to stay a day later than usual because the Credit Union is closed today for the holiday. Which reminds me, Jenny only has two more days left at work! Wednesday will be her last day and then she begins her preparation as a full-time stay at home wife and mom! Wow, it felt good to type that out! So Jenny will be coming home this morning and then we have an appointment with the sonogram doctor this afternoon. I will be sure to update on that visit as well. All in all, even though I missed my wife and son, I had a great weekend!

Save A Pretzel for the Gas Jets

2011-09-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

Thursdays here at Lose Your Life have always been YouTube Thursdays (it's just over a year since I've posted one). Well YouTube Thursdays are back with a hilarious video!

Nursery and Crib

2011-09-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

One major step in preparation for the arrival of our son was that Jenny and I had to prepare a nursery for him. Thankfully we have spare bedrooms, so we decided we would make the bedroom closest to ours Adrian's room. The bad news is that room needed a lot of work. It had basically become a junk room since we moved into the house back in March. Here are a few pictures of the room. Note these were taken after I had already cleared out a good majority of the junk.

Another issue with this room is that it had several cracks and holes (some large) in the walls. Before I could paint, some repair work would need to be done. Here is the biggest hole. It was approximately 10 inches across.

Here are the walls after I did all the repairs and patching. In the first picture you can see the above hole in the lower middle of the wall.

Finally, it was time to paint. Jenny chose a blue to match the bedding. (sorry some of my pics were a little dark)

After painting, I used a carpet cleaner to give the rug a thorough cleaning. We are still planning on eventually replacing all the carpet in the house, we are just waiting to save up a little more money. Since the walls were freshly painted and the carpet freshly cleaned, this morning I decided to go ahead and put the crib together. Of course I had to put on the bedding too. Here's Adrian's bed!

Jenny also has another set of bumpers that match the sheets and she will pair that with a brown sheet. I think it looks great. I'll post more pics as the rest of the nursery come together!

End of Summer Update

2011-09-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

It's been quitesome time since I've update my blog. Probably partly due to laziness, but Ialso like to think it has some to due with busyness. Jenny and I havebeen on the move staying busy with all kinds of stuff. Here are just a fewthings that have been going on in our lives lately:

Our niece wasborn July 22nd! She is a beautiful little girl and I have lots of pictures toshare of her.
I also have lotsof pictures to share of my precious nephew. He turned two in August and he isgetting so big! I love that he talks and expresses himself now. He is such asmart boy!
We endured arecord hot summer. This is from an article in last Friday's local paper: "With Friday's arrival offall, the hottest summer ever in Abilene officially ended. Of course, the heatwas on well before summer officially started June 21. It hit 102 on May 8, andthe high of 109 on May 28 tied for the all-time hottest day in May. Therewere 20 days of temperatures of 105 or hotter; five times it was 107, includingJune 17 to 19 ... when it wasn't even "summer" yet.All total, therehave been 80 days of at least 100 degrees this year. That's 30 percent of allthe days to date."
My father passedaway on Sept 8th after a bout with cancer.His death was exactly 7 months to theday after my mom's. We buried him Sept 15th in a lovely military service.
I was approvedand installed as our church's newest elder on Sept 18th.
Jenny and I madea trip to Houston the next day on the 19th and 20th. We had been planning thetrip for a while and had already had a hotel booked so we decided there was noreason to cancel. We attended a conference by Dr. Lane Tipton, a professor atWestminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
I've beenteaching through the book of 1 Peter in Sunday school.
And last but notleast, we continue to make preparations for the arrival of our son, AdrianMaxwell. Jenny's due date is now 11/11/11 so only a few more weeks! Mother andbaby are doing well and everything is right on track, thanks be to God.

Througheverything our Lord has been most gracious and loving to Jenny and I. There are days when feel as though my heart wants to burst because I'm soovercome with how much I love Him. Then there have been days when life feels so hard that I cry out likeJob "Though he slay me, I will hope in Him" (Job 13:15). The key though is that I continually place my hope in Him. Even in that,I know that I can only do it by His tender grace.

I will post more often now that we are getting closer toAdrian's arrival. Trust me, once he gets here, I'm sure you'll be tired ofreading my posts about him!

My Near-Death Experience

2011-09-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

Wow. So I really just almost died. Car accident? Bad fall? Medical issue? Nope, none of those. I was nearly killed from an odor that I happened to smell.

Obviously your first question is what did it smell like? To which, I can only answer, think of the worst smell you've ever smelled and multiple it times 1,000. Here's the story...there is a medium-sized blue trashcan on our back patio and it’s sat out there for months now. It's overflowing with random trash. Well I had been noticing in the last week or so that a foul odor seemed to be emanating from the vicinity of said garbage can. I noticed there were a few of those water diapers of Aikman's from when he went swimming and I thought maybe one of those had poop or pee in them and it had baked in the heat.

I decided it was time to empty that trash can and throw the garbage out. I grabbed a halfway full big, black garbage bag from inside. I took it out there and my plan was to just dump the blue trash can into this half-full bag. First, I removed a few of the top items that were sticking out of the blue can (a few beer bottles, some pool parts, a random piece of carboard, and a diaper). At this point the odor from the trash can was definitely noticeable, but still bearable. Then I went to pick up the trash can to turn it upside down and dump it and I was shocked to find that instead of weighing it’s normal weight, it was extremely heavy, like 100 pounds heavy. I then realized that during the few times of brief rain in the last six months, the can had collected water and was now fairly full. I'm strong, but there was no way I could lift this thing completely upside down to dump it in the trash bag. Besides, even if I could lift it, as soon as I turned it over, all the water would spill all over, including mostly likely on me. I was not too keen on having swampy toilet water poured out upon me, so I realized that I really had no choice but to dump the can, trash and all first, to empty it of all the water. I mightily shuffled the can over near the side of our storage shed near the side of our backyard. I tilted it over and sure enough the top trash and several gallons of putrid water came tumbling out. And that's when it hit me...

I was confronted, nay, assaulted by the hands-down, most foul-smelling stench I have ever smelled in my life. It was beyond stinky. Poop stinks. Trash stinks. Rotten things stink. This scent made all those smell like the finest perfumes from Europe. I immediately began gagging. Yes, gagging. I couldn't help it. I wasn't trying to, but my body involuntary began making that heaving motion like you are about to puke. Oh and remember I'm outside in the wide open, not some enclosed area. I honestly think if I would have been in a room and smelled what I did that I would have passed out. Anyway, the best I could make out, at the bottom of the trash can the combination of putrid water mixed with month old garbage had combined to bake some mass of death in the bottom of our trash can. I have no idea what specifically caused the smell other than to guess that the devil himself was somehow involved with it. Carrying on, I knew I couldn’t leave that can there. The somewhat good news was that as I stood the can back up after dumping it, the sludge monster at the bottom fell back into said can and the odor was curbed somewhat. By curbed I mean that instead of 50 dead rotten skunks someone had defecated on, now there were only about 15. I had originally planned on dumping the garbage and salvaging the trash can, since it's actually in pretty good shape. After the demon smell though I didn't care if the can was made out of solid gold, I was throwing it away. By the grace of God, I somehow managed to haul the can out the back gate and into the alley, I gagged/dry heaved a few more times before I managed to insert the entire trash can into the larger alley trash bin. I then ran.

At this point I am contemplating contacting the city's refuse department to see if they can schedule an emergency trash pickup for this afternoon. I shudder to think of the smell that could grow with the small can percolating inside the larger can. If nothing else, I would like to at least pass on a fair warning to anyone who might go by and open the alley can today. I shudder to think of an elderly person or a small child taking out the garbage as surely their body would not have the strength to withstand the smell lurking in there. Or perhaps I could go the entrepreneurial route and charge admission to “Come and sniff of the world’s most foul odor! Hear ye! Hear ye!” Then again, I cannot be liable should people actually begin to perish from the smell.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - A Stolen Life: A Memoir

2011-07-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Today I finished reading A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Lee Duggard. I presume most people are familiar with Duggard at this point. If not, she is the young lady who was kidnapped at age eleven and held hostage for eighteen years. Duggard was finally released in 2009 and this book tells her story of what she endured and then her recuperation after her release.

The book is very interesting at times and then very slow at times also. Duggard's book is a memoir and it reads a lot like a diary. If you're interested in her story, then I'd say give it a read.

Motherhood Is a Calling

2011-07-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

I was informed today that I had gone too long without a post here. No argument there. So today I'm linking to an article I came across about motherhood. The article is called, "Motherhood Is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank) by: Rachel Jankovic. Jankovic encourages mother's to view motherhood as a calling (title is pretty self-explanatory). Jankovic says,

"Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for."

Jankovic also goes on to explain how this understanding of motherhood is completely contrary to the world's way of thinking. But should that change anything for us? Of course not! Jankovic says,

"Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another—and laying down your life for another represents the gospel. Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die—and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death. But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to to the cross. To death. So lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go."

The article isn't very long, so I won't give away too much more here. Click here to read the entire article for yourself.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - A Damsel in Distress

2011-06-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading A Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse. This is the first fiction book I can remember reading in years. Yes, years. I just don't read fiction anymore so I decided after my last book that I wanted to read some fiction next. I considered several of the classics, but decided upon a P.G. Wodehouse novel. I had heard from some others about Wodehouse's style, including his satirical wit, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was pleased with the story, which is a classic romance story with some nice twists and turns thrown in. The book is very old as it was originally published in 1919, but I think this added to the enjoyment of the story. The language was definitely dated, but in a good way. Couple this with the London setting, and the dialogue between the characters was truly a joy to read.

Unfortunately while I did enjoy the book, I couldn't help but think in several places that I wanted to see the movie. What I mean is that I couldn't help but wonder how the events of the story would play out on the big screen. I wanted to see the characters, their expressions, their outfits, the settings, and on and on. I had this discussion with my wife the other day. I told Jenny that I've never left a movie theatre thinking, "Man, I've got to read that book!" I personally think that movies are the advancement in technology that has allowed us to improve upon storytelling. I know many will disagree with me, but I still prefer movies to books when it comes to fiction. And I say this as someone who really does love reading (After all I'm trying to read 52 books in a year). I've just found that I generally prefer to learn when I read rather than be entertained. I still don't understand why this is, but for now I can just say don't expect too many more fiction books on my list!

P.S. - Yes, A Damsel in Distress was made into a 1937 movie starring Fred Astaire, George Burns, and Gracie Allen. And yes, I am going to do my best to track down the film to watch it!

It's a Boy!

2011-06-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I've unintentionally let the suspense build on posting about our sonogram visit last Friday but unfortunately due to some remodeling at the house, our home computer is disconnected. As you may have read in my previous post, Jenny and I traveled to Denton/Aubrey this past weekend to visit Jenny's family and to celebrate her grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary and Jenny's 26th birthday. We had decided since we would be with her family, this weekend would be a good time to schedule a sonogram/ultrasound (what exactly is the difference?) so her parents could be present when we found out the sex of our baby. Our appointment was schedule for Friday morning at 10:00.

Friday morning I woke early. I just couldn't sleep! After some devotional time and breakfast, it was finally time for us to head to the sonogram place. Jenny had found a private practice online a few weeks back. It's called Visions of Love, which I thought was a most appropriate name. We arrived at the office and Jenny filled out some quick paperwork as we all waited in eager anticipation.

Finally after a few minutes, the lady brought us back into the room where she would do the sonogram. It was very different from a doctor's office and instead had a very "homey" feel to it. There was an actual bed and then beside that was the sonogram equipment. There were several stools next to the bed. This is where I sat. Jenny's parents sat on a couch at the end of the bed and watched the sonogram on a big screen tv mounted on the wall. There were also three other screens placed around the room for viewing.

Then we started the process. The technician was very friendly. She began rubbing Jenny's tummy and immediately we saw our little one on the screens! The technician kept looking at different angles but unfortunately baby Silva was not cooperating. It's little legs were crossed so we still couldn't tell what he/she was! After searching for about 10 minutes, the technician decided that we would take a break and have Jenny drink some cold water, as this often helps to get the baby moving.

After Jenny chugged a bottle of water, we went at it again. And this time after a few minutes the technician announced to us the big news - we are having a boy! She said she is 99% sure it's a male. I must admit I was taken a bit by surprise since all along I thought we were having a girl! Shows how much I know! Well even though I was wrong, I could not be happier. I am so excited that Jenny and I are the proud parents to a little boy. We have decided that we will name him Adrian Maxwell. Many people have asked if it makes a difference knowing what we are having now. I actually think it does. As much as I was already in love with our little one, knowing now that he is a boy and being able to actually address him by name, just drives home the fact that God has graciously given us this beautiful life and He know entrusts us with caring for and raising this young man. Now that the anticipation of knowing the sex is out of the way, we just have to deal with the anticipation of getting to meet Adrian in person. Come on November!

(click photo to enlarge)

A Weekend of Celebrations!

2011-06-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday afternoon when Jenny and I got off work we hit the road and headed for Denton. We had planned a quick trip to visit Jenny's family several weeks back as we had a few things to celebrate. First, Friday was Jenny's grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary! Then Saturday was Jenny's 26th birthday! Then, since we already knew we'd be in the area, a few weeks back Jenny also made an appointment with a private sonogram company, those places that do the 3D pictures. We were excited to get some pictures of the little one, but we were most excited to find out the sex of our baby! I did my best to chronicle our entire trip from begining to end, so here goes!

First, we arrived in Denton around 8:00pm Thurday night and we met Jenny's parents for dinner. When we were driving in Jenny called her dad and he said to pick where we wanted to eat. Now to understand the story behind where we chose to go, I have to explain that when my siblings and I were younger one of our favorite restaurants was Panchos Mexican Buffet. Now I know that there are probably countless other places to get better Mexican food, but there was just something about raising that flag! Well the Panchos in Abilene closed down probably 10-15 years ago so it had been ages since I'd eaten there. When Jenny suggested it, she says my eyes lit up! So we stopped and had dinner at Panchos and man it was great! I raised that flag until my heart (and my stomach) were content.

From there, we drove to our hotel. Usually when we go for a visit, Jenny and I stay at her parent's house but as of late, Jenny has been having a more difficult time sleeping. I wanted to be sure she had plenty of space to stretch out and also make sure it was plenty cool for her, so we decided we would just rent a room. Plus, it was her birthday celebration! We found a good deal on a room at the Best Western Premier Crown Chase Inn & Suites. I had never heard of this hotel before, but it was very nice. It was pretty new and had everything you need when you stay out of town - comfy bed, breakfast buffet, and of course swimming pool! Here are some pics of us eating breakfast and some crazy guy acting like he's seven years old.

Friday morning we woke up early, had breakfast and then Jenny's parents picked us up at the hotel. We had an appointment at 10:00am for the sonogram. Since that was such an exciting trip, I think that story deserves it's own post complete with pictures.

After the sonogram, we went to meet Jenny's grandparents, brother, and uncle at Outback to have an early celebratory lunch for the 50th anniversary. After getting some steak and baked potato for fuel, we embarked on some baby shopping. We hit up a few stores for Jenny to buy some maternity clothes and then to look at some baby clothes for the little one!

Finally after being out in the heat all day, Jenny and I were both ready to rest in some nice air conditioning. We had her parents drop us back off to the hotel so we could lie down and relax a bit before heading to Aubrey for the anniversary dinner. After resting for about an hour, we drove to Aubrey and met Jenny's parents at Betty's, Aubrey's famous local cafe. Jenny's mom had ordered a gorgeous cake. We finished decorating a table and then went back to their house to wait. About 45 minutes later we drove back to Betty's to wait for Jenny's grandparents to get there. They seemed to really like the cake as it was a surprise and were happy to get to eat with family and friends. And as if that wasn't enough to make me happy, I was fortunate to be there on Betty's seafood night. It was an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet including, fried catfish and fried shrimp. I ate so much seafood that I thought I might grow gills, but I still was able to save just enough room for a slice of that delicious cake! After dinner, we sat and chatted for a bit and then the party moved to Grammy and Pa's house.

At about 8:30pm, Jenny and I knew we needed to head back to our hotel. Since we were out of town and enjoying a mini-vacation, we wanted to spend some time enjoying ourselves too. We hit up the pool again, but we made sure we got out to leave enough time to make a Chipotle run before they closed at 10:00. We hurried in and changed clothes and made it to Chipotle with about 10 minutes to spare. Of course we didn't need long, so we chowed down on a burrito and some tacos. Then Jenny came up with an inpromptu idea that we should go see a movie. I quickly scanned my iPhone and found a theater that was only minutes a way. We wanted to see either the new X-Men movie or Super 8. Unfortunately I told Jenny that I figured Super 8 might be sold out since it was Friday night and opening weekend for the movie. The good news was, we were able to get tickets and we got in just early enough to snag perfect seats. I don't want to give anything about the movie away, but let me just say that the film is excellent. If you're looking for a great summer movie, go see Super 8! After the movie it was almost 1:00am. Jenny and I stopped and put some gas and headed to the hotel where we were out and sleeping soundly in minutes.

The next morning we slept in a bit later than we had Friday. We went and ate breakfast and then we stopped at the hotel business center to check online for a good spot for Jenny's birthday dinner that evening. Jenny wanted something different, but good. She had the brilliant idea to check the Food Network website and more specifically, Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives website. From there, of course she searched for something around the Ft Worth area and she came up with Chef Point Cafe in Watauga, which is northern Ft Worth. More on this amazing place in a bit.

We then had to pack because we would be checking out so as we could just head home from the cafe after dinner. After checking out of the hotel, we traveled to Grammy and Pa's house in Aubrey. There Jenny's parents met us and we all (minus Pa) went to eat lunch at Ernesto's, a local Mexican restaurant that Grammy enjoys (but Pa doesn't). After lunch, we all rested for a few hours and then we headed to Ft Worth for some more baby shopping. We went to Buy Buy Baby and Babys R' Us. After killing time shopping, we made our way to Chef Point Cafe, the place Jenny had found online.

Now Chef Point Cafe is a really interesting restaurant. Their "catch" is that it's gourmet restaurant inside a gas station. Yes, you read that correctly the restaurant is literally inside a gas station. Here are some pics so you can get an idea of the atmosphere.

You've got to click on the link above to read all about this place and even watch the clip with Guy Fieri to get more of the experience. Now as if the quirkiness of eating inside a gas station wasn't enough, the food there is amazing. I consider myself a man who knows good food and I am being completely sincere when I say that my meal was one of the best I've ever eaten. I had a stuffed blackened chicken breast. The menu describes it as "chicken breast hand stuffed with pepper jack cheese & fresh crab meat, smothered in Asiago sauce served over angel hair pasta". Yes, it was every bit as good as it sounds. Jenny opted for the stuffed New York strip, which was a huge piece of steak stuffed with canadian bacon and smoked cheese.

Chef Point is also supposedly really known for their bread pudding. Now I must admit that I was a bit leery about the bread pudding. I felt obligated to try it since I am a fat man and it had rave reviews, but on the other hand I thought "how good can bread pudding really be?" I was wrong. Big time wrong. This bread pudding was ridiculously good. I don't even know how to describe it, but it you watch the clip on the website from Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, you can see them make it. Okay well enough about that place because it's seriously making me hungry, but just know if you are ever in the Ft Worth area, I strongly recommend this place.

After dinner we said our good-byes and made the drive back to good 'ole Abilene. It was truly a wonderful weekend but what made it most special was spending it with my wife and son. Man, it sure does feel good to write that!

Implications of Christ's Perfect Obedience

2011-06-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd share this excerpt from Truths We Confess: A Layman's Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith Volume One by R.C. Sproul. This is the book I reviewed in my last post.

WCF 8.5. The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, and sacrifice of himself, which he, through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.

This paragraph summarizes important points that are distinctive to Reformed theology. The first reference to the mediatory work of Christ is to His perfect obedience. Christians often have a tendency to think that the redemptive work of Christ was accomplished solely through his sacrificial death on the cross. But the life of Jesus was just as important to our salvation as his death. He was born as the second Adam, and he submitted himself to the law at every point.

Christ had an obligation as our representative not only to die for us, but also to live for us. By achieving a life of perfect obedience, he fulfilled all the terms of the Old Testament covenant. Stipulations were imposed in the covenant by way of the law. The dual sanctions of the covenant included both the blessing and the curse. The blessing of God is promised to all who obey the terms of the covenant, but the curse of God is pronounced upon all who fail to keep the terms of that covenant.

Jesus was the only one who ever fully kept the terms of the covenant. Everyone else earned God’s curse. In his death, Christ took upon himself the curse deserved by the covenant-breakers. Furthermore, by his life of complete obedience, Jesus achieved the blessing that was promised to those who keep the terms of the covenant.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - Truths We Confess: A Layman's Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith Vol. One

2011-06-05T21:40:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Truths We Confess: A Layman's Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith Vol. One by R.C. Sproul. This book is the first in a three-volume set. The books are a commentary covering the entire Westminster Confession of Faith. Volume one covers chapters 1-8 of the Confession. I plan on continuing through with the other two volumes in the coming weeks.
As for the book, I cannot say enough about how great this series is. I know many in the reformed camp are loyal to G.I. Williamson's study guide on the WCF as it is generally what I hear recommended when someone wants to undertake a study of the WCF. I own Williamson's study guide and it's certainly quality stuff, but in my opinion Sproul's set is superior. I also own a study guide on the Confessions by Dr. Joey Pipa. As much as I respect and love Dr. Pipa, again, I feel Sproul's commentary to be better.

Now in all fairness, I do feel that Sproul's advantage may be that his books are an actual commentary, whereas the Williamson and Pipa books are more of study guides. Also Sproul has the advantage of using three books to cover the WCF, so as you might guess he is much more thorough in his treatment. The knock on Truths We Confess would be that being a three volume set, it is more costly than the other study guides.

To conclude, if you are looking for a resource to help you study the Westminster Confession of Faith more in-depth, then I strongly recommend picking up Truths We Confess.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - Gospel Powered Parenting: How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting

2011-06-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

My most recent read was Gospel Powered Parenting: How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting by William P. Farley. I don't know anything about Farley, but I had seen the book recommended at Westminster Bookstore. Being a new father, I figured it was time for me to acquire some parenting knowledge. Of course what better parenting advice is there than Gospel Powered Parenting!

I won't beat around the bush - I loved this book! It started off a bit slowly for me, but then it really picked up and I was immersed. The first five chapters of the book lay the groundwork for Gospel Powered Parenting. Farley essentially explains the gospel and how we have to relate this to our parenting. I am not saying that the gospel ever gets old by any means, but I think I was just anxious to hear how to put everything in play. Then in chapter six Farley really begins explaining how one uses the gospel in parenting. Of course you have to read the book, but some quick points are that parents need to be wholly dependent on God for grace and strength to be the parent God has called them to be. Second, if we love our children we must give them the gospel. We must teach it to them, live it out before them, and then teach it to them some more. We must discipline our children with the goal of changing their heart rather than just their behavior. There is so much more but I really want to encourage you to get this book and read it yourself!

I will say that the book seems to be written more towards fathers. Not that mom's couldn't or wouldn't benefit from it, but Farley continually reiterates that it is the husband/father's job to lead his household, therefore as the father goes, so does his household. There are some extremely convicting sections in the book where Farley calls men to be true husbands, fathers, and leaders. This means humbly serving and loving our families like Christ loved His church.

In conclusion, this is easily the best book I've ever read on parenting. If you're a parent it's a must read and it would be a perfect gift to give to an expectant mom and dad.

Featured Blog - Monkey Tails

2011-06-02T08:28:00.000-07:00

I have been bad about sharing links to websites I enjoy. I read a post from my sister's blog today and it just made me laugh too much to not share. She blogs at Monkey Tails and her blog revolves around her 21 month old son, my precious nephew, Aikman. If you follow Lose Your Life, you've surely seen pictures of Aikman before, but click below for a little glimpse into what life is like with him.

Curious Monkey

Baby Silva Update! - 16 Weeks

2011-05-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Today Jenny is 16 weeks along! According to pregnancy center, here is how our little one is developing:

Get ready for a growth spurt. In the next few weeks, your baby will double his weight and add inches to his length. Right now, he's about the size of an avocado: 4 1/2 inches long (head to rump) and 3 1/2 ounces. His legs are much more developed, his head is more erect than it has been, and his eyes have moved closer to the front of his head. His ears are close to their final position, too. The patterning of his scalp has begun, though his locks aren't recognizable yet. He's even started growing toenails. And there's a lot happening inside as well. For example, his heart is now pumping about 25 quarts of blood each day, and this amount will continue to increase as your baby continues to develop.

Here is the picture from Baby Center of what a 16-week old baby looks like:

This past Monday Jenny and I visited the doctor for an update on our little one. We were scheduled to hear the heartbeat, but unfortunately baby Silva was being stubborn. The doctor searched using the doppler (I'm told that's what's it's called, although I thought that was the thing that looked for thunderstorms) but he couldn't find the heartbeat. Then he called in the nurse to look and she couldn't find it either. At this point, a bit of fear tried to creep in, but I prayed and I knew that God had everything under control. Since we couldn't find the heartbeat using the doppler, we went into another room to have an ultrasound. This time the doctor saw the heartbeat right away and we even got some new pictures!

Here is the same photo above, I just turned it sideways so you could make out baby Silva a little better. Isn't he/she precious! (click on the photo to enlarge)

The next big appointment will be June 10th. Jenny and I are going to visit her family and we are going to have one of the 3D sonograms done in Denton. We hope this will be the big day when we find out the sex of our little one! I will try to update the blog as soon as possible, but being out of town, I don't know if I will have access to a computer. I already love him/her so very much and I pray for them daily. I can't wait until mid-November when we finally get to see each other face to face!

52 Books in 52 Weeks - A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

2011-05-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul Miller. As the title implies, this is a book on prayer. Yes, it's a book on how to pray, but more than that what I took away from the book is an encouragement to pray. The book is chocked full of Miller's personal stories of examples of prayers and answers to prayers. Miller has an autistic adult daughter and he relays many stories of his and his wife's struggles dealing with the daughter's disability. Miller doesn't stop there though as he also relates stories about his own shortcomings, his ministry, his other children, and several other general life stories. Of course the theme behind these stories is how prayer affects Miller's life.

Some good points that I came away with from the book are that prayer works! Miller covers several chapters where he states that many times Christians are cynics when it comes to prayer - we just don't believe it works or we'd obviously pray more. So Miller advocates praying often and for just about everything. I like this.

Miller also gives the important reminder that the reality is we are completely inadequate when it comes to dealing with our lives. We need to be totally dependent upon our Father for everything and therefore taking everything to Him in prayer is most neccessary.

In conclusion, I recommend this book to anyone who would like to be encouraged in their prayer life, and I think this is every saint.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion

2011-05-19T00:13:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading the book Why We Love The Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. This book is essentially a counter-argument for those who espouse the belief that church is not necessary to the Christian faith. DeYoung is a pastor in Michigan while Kluck is a writer, but is a layperson as far as his role in ministry goes.

As previously mentioned, the book is essentially a counter-argument for those who have left church and don’t see what value it offers. DeYoung and Kluck specifically seem to counter three specific authors and their books when presenting their case. The first author countered is Jim Palmer who wrote the book Divine Nobodies:Shedding Religion to Find God. Next is George Barna (yes, the pollster) who wrote a book titled Revolution, which is about thinking it’s revolutionary to forsake church. Yes, I said thinking it's revolutionary, because as DeYoung and Kluck point out, this thinking is really not revolutionary at all, but is simply self-serving. Finally, Why We Love the Church offers criticism of Leonard Sweet, who is part of the emergent church. Sweet has authored several books, but the one DeYoung and Kluck seem to take aim at most is Sweet’s The Gospel According to Starbucks. In this book Sweet argues that people are tired of the church and the church needs to be more like Starbucks and offer people experience and community.

The chapters of Why We Love the Church alternate between those authored by DeYoung and those authored by Kluck. With all due respect to Mr. Kluck, for me DeYoung’s chapters did a far better job of holding my attention. DeYoung, as the seminary-trained pastor, does an excellent job of putting forth a scriptural, historical, and even practical argument why Christians need the institution known as the church. Kluck’s chapters seem to offer a more pop culture commentary on Christianity and the church. To be honest, I struggle a bit to even describe the Kluck chapters because I found them to be a bit scatter-brained and overall forgettable.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who may have left the church and is attempting to go about their Christian faith on their own. The book isn’t very long, but one could even read the book and skip the Kluck chapters and still come away with a solid book on why the church is integral to Christian faith.

Break from Calvin's Institutes

2011-05-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure my loyal readers have noticed, I have taken a break from reading/posting on Calvin's Institutes. However, I do have a good reason and I'm not just being lazy. (Although perhaps laziness factors in just a tad). The reason I am taking a break from reading/posting on Calvin's Institutes here at Lose Your Life is because I found out two weeks ago from my pastor that we will begin reading through The Institutes as a church on Sunday evenings! Of course, this is very exciting news because it is an excellent study to undertake and I believe it will benefit myself and my fellow members immensely. Also, so as not to disappoint my readers too terribly, I will pick back up where I left off when we get to that place with my church. Be patient though as it may be a few months! If anyone is interested in reviewing what we have already gone over, simply click on the tag "Blogging the Institutes" at the bottom of this post and it will bring up all the previous posts regarding The Institutes.

Part 4 - Called to the Ministry

2011-05-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth part in my story of how I came to faith in Christ and how I eventually grew to be a Confessionally Reformed Presbyterian. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

As I had now begun to faithfully attend church and began to pray and read the bible, I just couldn’t get enough of this new life in Christ! I could actually begin to notice a difference in myself. My depression and loneliness were long gone and I actually began to enjoy life again. I was at church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. In fact, it was one Wednesday night early on in my attendance that I was invited to the youth group. At this time I was either still 18 or I had just turned 19. I remember being invited to go to the youth service since I had more in common and could better relate to the teenagers than I could to the older adults. Most of the teens were younger than me, closer to 16 or so, but everyone made me feel extremely welcome. I quickly made friends with many of the youth and I was especially drawn to the youth pastor. His name was Jerry Lane and he was one of the coolest guys I had ever met.

I distinctively remember that in high school, the Christians I had known were not like me at all. Most of them didn’t really want anything to do with me, and I didn’t mind because I didn’t want anything to do with them either. But Jerry was different. I viewed him as a normal guy who also happened to be a Christian. What I mean is that he really liked sports, especially football, he enjoyed watching movies, and playing games, and he had a great sense of humor. Jerry was always joking around and making everyone laugh – a normal guy! More than all those things though, Jerry loved Christ and desired to help young people come to know and love Christ as well. I really began to look up to Jerry. You could say he became a mentor to me. I also did not have any male figures in my life to look up to at this time as my own father had moved overseas for work.

I am not sure why he thought this would be a good idea, but one week Jerry asked me to share my testimony. He knew that I had come from a background that was completely non-Christian and he could see how excited I now was about God and the things of God. I guess he thought it might be helpful for the other youth, who had almost all grown up in church, to hear things from a different perspective. I agreed and one Wednesday evening I shared the story of how Jesus Christ had changed my life. I enjoyed speaking and sharing in front of everybody. It was fun and it seemed like the audience enjoyed hearing from me as well. I don’t remember how long after that it was, but Jerry asked me to speak again. Of course I had already shared my testimony, so what was I supposed to talk about now? I remember I would just talk about what I had been reading in the bible lately and whatever was on my heart. I would estimate that it was sometime around the fall of 1999 I shared my very first “sermon”. Of course I use that term lightly because at the time, I had no idea how to prepare a sermon or anything formal like that. Instead I just decided to share what was on my heart. I do remember I shared from Romans 10. I tried to encourage the young people to not be shy about their faith, but rather they needed to share the good news of Jesus Christ with all their friends! Jerry told me I did a good job and he hoped to hear more from me in the future.

As the months passed, the Holy Spirit continued to grow me in my new faith. I loved reading and studying scripture. I loved listening to Christian radio programs. I loved reading books about various spiritual topics. I really loved watching TBN and all their various shows. Others could see evidence of my growth as well and soon Jerry asked me to move from being a normal part of the youth group into more of a role of leadership. Of course, I was extremely excited, but also humbled to assist him. I believe it was during the summer of 2000 that I accompanied Jerry and the other youth to the annual summer church camp held just outside of Abilene. One night during the week, the speaker talked about the call to ministry. At the end of his message, in classic Pentecostal style, an altar call was given. If you’re not familiar with this, the speaker basically invites people to come forward for whatever reason and then others pray for them. In Pentecostal summer youth camp though, throw in the addition of singing, crying, moaning, shouting, more singing, dancing, falling on the floor, praying, and more singing. I have literally seen these altar calls go on for hours. On this particular evening the altar call was for those who felt they were being called into ministry. I honestly don’t remember and I probably couldn’t even explain it at the time, but for whatever reason that night I believed that God was calling me into full-time gospel ministry as a vocation.

Of course after that evening, Jerry and my other pastors did everything they could to encourage my calling. And I was and am extremely appreciative for all they did for me. I would travel with them when they preached out of town and even out the state and even out of the country on one occasion. I would preach regularly on Wednesday evenings to the youth group. I assisted Jerry in all manner of planning and coordinating our youth services and youth events. I even preached on a few Sunday evenings to the adult congregation. And lest you think I was in it only for the glory of traveling and preaching, I would also come up to the church just about every week and help Jerry clean the church, including picking up people’s trash and scrubbing toilets. But I never once complained. I considered it all an honor to serve my church, and ultimately Christ in whatever capacity I could. I also underwent some ministerial training with my senior pastor. Eventually all my service and training led to me receiving an exhorter’s license with the Pentecostal Church of God. The exhorter’s license was the first step in becoming an ordained minister, which was my main goal. After that I would hopefully become a pastor someday.

During all this time I had taken several courses at the local junior college and I had been working various jobs, but my main goal of someday becoming a pastor still remained. I honestly don’t remember why but as the years progressed I could not shake the feeling that I needed more formal education in the fields of theology, ministry, and bible. Now what would have normally been encouraged in most churches – a man seeking full-time ministry desiring to go off to bible school/seminary – was not at mine. I don’t mean to say that my pastors discouraged me in any way from going to school for formal training, but their thinking seemed to be more along the lines that formal education wasn’t really necessary to become a good pastor. After all, none of them had any formal bible, theology, or ministry education nor did the majority of men in our denomination. The few that did go off to bible college attended small schools that weren’t accredited in any way. But I had already made my mind up that I was going to go to school and get a degree in something to do with bible/ministry. I researched several options and finally made my choice. After months of applications, interviews, and transferring of transcripts, I announced first to my mom of course, but then to my pastors and church, that I would be moving to West Palm Beach, Florida to attend Palm Beach Atlantic University. And in August of 2003 that’s exactly what I did. My mom drove me to DFW airport, where I purchased a rental car, loaded my belongings, and began the 1500 mile/23 hour drive to South Florida where I had never once set foot and didn’t know a single soul to become a biblical studies major at PBA.

Part 3 - Putting it All Together

2011-05-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

This is the third part in my story of how I came to faith in Christ and how I eventually grew to be a Confessionally Reformed Presbyterian. Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 here.

As I left off before, I had gone back to living my own life not really giving any serious regard to God, Jesus Christ, or Christianity in general. At this point I was in my senior year of high school, so my life was busy with all the routine senior activities. Many of my friends were planning their futures and deciding where to go off to college, to join the military, or to begin their new career out in the job field. As for me my plans after high school were…uh…well, I had no plans! I honestly had no clue what I wanted to do with my life or what I was going to do. As our senior year goes on Chris has really become involved with his church. His life is totally changed and he seems like a new person (little did I know he actually was). Something else major happened in Chris’ life during that time – he began dating a young lady from school. I didn’t really know her much other than what Chris had told me about her. I did find out one interesting fact – she was a pastor’s daughter. I actually encouraged Chris to start dating her. It became very serious between them and they eventually became engaged later in the school year. Another significant change was that Chris began attending church with his new fiancée where her dad was the pastor.

As the month’s passed I eventually graduated and like all HS grads, I was ecstatic to finally be done with school! (Well sort of). The summer came and I was working at some different fast food places around town. I still had no solid plans for college, other than that I was not going to move off anywhere. I was mostly just enjoying my summer and enjoying hanging out with friends. Social life was still a big part of my life and I loved being around friends and girls and just generally hanging out. But while I loved being surrounded by people and I was a complete extrovert, on the inside I don’t think I had ever been so lonely. I think part of it was the uncertainty about my future. I was basically a man now, but I had no idea how to be one. I just felt scared, I felt lonely, I felt depressed. All these feelings came to a head on a morning in the summer of 1998. I don’t remember where they went but my family had left to go out of town for the weekend. I stayed at home because I had to work. I remember the night before I had invited some people over because we had a house to ourselves! We didn’t do anything crazy, just mostly hung out. Now it was the next morning and I woke up to an empty house. My family was gone, my friends were gone and suddenly the loneliness really hit me. I can still remember sitting at our dining room table and I didn’t know why I felt the way I felt but I was so depressed. I just felt like my life was empty. I began to weep. I started thinking again about the night several months back when I had gone to the front to pray and become a Christian. Then I felt even more convicted that I had failed miserably at doing so. I continued to weep. I felt like I was at an extremely low point in my life and I didn’t think things were going to get better anytime soon. Through all that depression and loneliness, I did feel that I had a small semblance of hope and that was in Jesus Christ. Only one problem. I still didn’t really know anything about Jesus Christ. It didn’t matter though. I decided right then and there that something in my life had to change.

I don’t remember how long it was after that morning, but it couldn’t have been more than a week or two, when I was walking through the mall and I ran into Chris. I hadn’t seen him in several weeks. He had been busy planning a wedding and spending all his free time with his future wife. I still distinctly remember that when I talked to him in the middle of the Mall of Abilene, I had to choke back tears. Chris and I made small talk and then I just asked him if I could talk to him sometime. He’ll tell you now (we’re still great friends) that he knew right then and there in the mall that something was different about me and he knew that this would be an important talk.

I don’t actually remember how long it was after seeing Chris at the mall that day that he came over to my house. We talked and I told him I was ready to really become a Christian. He prayed with me and he gave me a NT bible. It was the first bible I had ever owned. We also decided that it was imperative that I start attending church somewhere. I naturally decided I would start going with him.

The next couple of days blew by, but I remember that I didn’t like the bible Chris had given me. Not that I didn’t appreciate it by any means, but it was a type of paraphrase of sorts. In my pride, I wanted a real bible. I remember asking my mom if we had one. We found an old one that apparently belonged to one of my uncles as his name was embossed on the cover. Yes, you read that correctly. We found one, as in we actually had to search for one and finally found one buried away in a closet. I decided that I was going to read the bible for the first time in my 18 years. And read I did. I remember that I was captivated by the gospels. The things Jesus said were so profound! I still have that bible and as I recently looked through it, I found where I literally highlighted entire pages at a time. I knew that when you highlight, you’re supposed to mark the important stuff, but what do you do when every single thing is the important stuff?!! I think it took me a couple of days to finish the gospels and then I read through the rest of the NT in about a week or so.

In addition to catching up on 18 years of bible reading, I began attending church. I remember the first time I went with Chris, the church was very different from what I was familiar with. This was a Pentecostal church (I had no clue what that meant at the time) and all I knew was Roman Catholicism. The church seemed vibrant to me. The people seemed genuine. Everyone was so friendly. I had met the pastor before when I hung out with Chris a few times, as he was soon to be Chris’ new father-in-law. I immediately fell in love with his preaching. It spoke to me. It was energized, unlike the boring homilies the RC priest would deliver. Yup, I was a Christian now and I loved it. I loved Jesus. I loved the bible. I loved church. I was excited about the new life God had for me and I was ready to live for Him.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - With a Shepherd's Heart: Reclaiming the Pastoral Office of Elder

2011-05-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Today I finished reading With a Shepherd's Heart: Reclaiming the Pastoral Office of Elder by John R. Sittema. This book is similar to the previous book I read on the office of elder, Called to Serve: Essay for Elders and Deacons. Because the books are so similar in topic and also because I read them so close together, I naturally kept reverting back and comparing Sittema's book with the other. I don't think this was very fair of me to be honest, but it happened nonetheless. So how does Sittema's book stack up with the other? Well first, With a Shepherd's Heart is written entirely by Sittema, whereas Called to Serve is a compilation of essays put together by different authors. I do think this makes a bit of a difference in that Sittema's book contiually maintained a steady theme throughout the entire book. This theme of course is understanding the role of an elder as that of a shepherd. Sittema acknowledges that all elders are not called to be full-time pastors in the sense that they will have seminary training and preach sermons regularly, however Sittema does believe it is the duty of every elder to be a shepherd to the flock.

With a Shepherd's Heart is broken into three different parts: The first section is titled, "The Shepherd's Heart" and it deals with regaining pastoral purpose. In three chapters Sittema lays out his understanding of the role of the elder. Next, part two is "The Shepherd's Eye". This section contains twelve chapters covering the areas that an elder needs to prepare for. First, Sittema covers some "enemies" that have crept into the church in recent years, such as secularism, pragmatism, feminism, relativism, and materialism. Then Sittema covers pastoring familes and pastoring seniors. I especially found the three chapters on ministering to seniors helpful as this is an area I personally feel unqualified and struggle with. Finally the third section of the book contains twelve chapters under the heading "The Shepherd's Hand". This section essentially deals with developing pastoral skills. Here Sittema talks about actually teaching and catechising, the importance of home visits, church membership, and church discipline.

Sittema does a great job of being thorough in his explanations, although at a few points this turns into redundancy. Overall I did benefit from this book, but probably not quite as much as I did from the Called to Serve book. This however may just be more of the fact that Called to Serve covered some specific issues I was unsure about, whereas With a Shepherd's Heart covered issues that I was more familiar with. Some of my favorite chapters in Sittema's book were the three chapters on ministering to seniors, and his chapters on teaching and structuring education for the congregation.

Another positive of this book is that it is beneficial for training of new elders or continued training for current elders. Throughout the entire book Sittema offers case study examples for elders to work through and there are even two or three entire chapters that are devoted to study questions and scripture references.

As for the drawbacks to the book, first it was extremely dated. Normally this isn't a problem with a theological book as theological truths remain true throughout the ages, but Sittema uses so many real life examples, the dating really comes through. For example, there are several references to TV shows such as Dallas, Roseanne, and The Cosby Show to name a few. Which brings me to my next knock against the book. Sittema comes across as highly opposed to TV. The topic of television comes up at least once in just about every other chapter. Sittema is convinced that television is a huge drain on society and as such God-fearing people should severely limit their TV watching. Now, I am not saying that I would disagree with Sittema here; for the most part I agree. However, a few times Sittema is a bit dogmatic about the TV issue and I think minister's can easily bind people's consciences when continually telling them to quit watching TV. Lastly, Sittema references and even recommends the parachurch ministry of Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family more than once. I am at this point not taking a completely oppositional stance to Dobson and Focus on the Family, but in my opinion, there are far better resouces to consult for the issues Sittema brings up.

In conclusion, I enjoyed With a Shepherd's Heart and I believe it to be a beneficial read for those seeking or currenly in the office of elder.

Blogger, get it together!

2011-05-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't know if anyone has noticed, but blogger has been acting a fool the last couple of days! I know blogger was down for maintenance, which was an incovenience in that I couldn't post all day Thursday. Then when it finally came back up yesterday, I noticed that the most recent post I had put up Wed night was missing! Fortunately I had saved it in a Word document and simply pasted it into blogger, so I just reposted it again. Now today I log on here and I see that blogger has somehow restored that missing post! Now I have double posts! Lol. I deleted the second one so there wouldn't be double, but now I also notice that I lost comments on that post and the one before it. Not sure if blogger will restore my comments too, although for some reason I doubt it. I wonder if Wordpress has these problems... okay, rant complete.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church

2011-05-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

My most recent read was Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church: A Guide for Ministry by Michael Lawrence. Lawrence is an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC. If you don't recognize the name, this is the church Mark Dever pastors. If you don't know Mark Dever, I will just say that he is one of my favorite preacher's to listen to.

Okay, back to the book...Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church is written for ministers and it's designed as an introduction to biblical theology. I would also say that it is an introduction to hermeneutics because the whole point for Lawrence of doing biblical theology is to learn to understand and then subsequently preach, the scriptures redemptive historically. Let me back up a bit and unwrap some of this terminology.

First, Lawrence does a good job of explaining what exactly biblical theology is. According to Lawrence, biblical theology is what the bible teaches in the context of it's own progressively revealed and progressively developing storyline. A better way to understand biblical theology might be to compare it to systematic theology. Let's use understanding salvation as an example. Using biblical theology to explain salvation, one would begin with the fall of man in the garden and of course Gen 3:15 and God's promise of redemption. We would continue on into Gen 15 and God's covenant with Abraham. Then on through the OT including the story of God's chosen people, Israel, and how He had a plan for them. Then on into the NT and the fulfillment of God's promise in the coming of the Messiah. Obviously Christ's crucifixion, death, and resurrection would be a crucial element in understanding salvation. Finally, it would be explained how the church is now God's chosen people and someday He will return for them and they will rule and reign with Him forever. That is the explanation of salvation in a nutshell from the standpoint of biblical theology.

Now, what about salvation explained from a systematic theological approach? Systematic theology would explain salvation in terms of man's falleness and his need for reconciliation with God. ST would then go on to explain regeneration, faith/repentance, and eventually justification, sanctification, and eventually glorification. I know that explanation seems much significantly shorter than BT, but it isn't necessarily because in reality there is so much to unpack in the doctrines of man's depravity, justification, the atonement, etc. Anyway, I hope you see the difference betweeen biblical theology and systematic theology. I explained all that to say that Lawrence's book is an explanation of why BT is important and how to do it properly. Yes, there is a right and a wrong way to understand the scriptures.

Lawrence argues for a redemptive historical reading of the bible, which basically means that the bible is understood to be the story of God's plan of redemption throughout the entire bible. This means that when we read about the Israelites entering Canaan, the story isn't just a history lesson, but it's a foreshadowing of our promised life in Christ. It means that the bible, especially the OT, isn't just a story book about being a moral person, but rather we should see God's plan of redeeming His people throughout the entirety of scripture.

Well if I am not doing a very good job of explaining this, then that's okay because Lawrence does and that means you will benefit from reading this book! Oh, and I know I mentioned at the beginning that Lawrence is primarily writing to ministers in this book (and he is), but that doesn't mean that a lay person won't profit from reading it. I certainly recommend this book as a helpful guide to understanding how to read and understand the scriptures as God intended.

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will be May the 8th. This day will be significant for two reasons: 1) it’s the day that will be traditionally celebrated as Mother’s Day 2) it will be exactly three months to the day that God called my mother home. I think about my mother often, but I would be remiss if I were to say that I haven’t thought about her even more this past week. Everyone seems to be talking about how much they love and appreciate their mom’s. I’ve had several people discuss plans regarding how they plan to honor their mom this weekend. One of my coworkers even shared with me how he was going to drive several hours to surprise his mom this weekend because he hasn’t seen her in a while. He’s 56 years old and his mom is 74. Please don’t misunderstand me as I relay these stories. I’m not bitter, I’m really not. In fact, I’m quite thankful that these friends are planning to spend time with their mothers. If nothing else, from my mom’s passing I’ve learned that I didn’t get to spend enough time with her the last few days of her life here on earth. The last time I had talked to her was the Sunday night before she died Tuesday morning. Why didn’t I go by and visit her Monday? Why didn’t I make the time? I’ve learned that I can’t live with regrets. God worked everything out in His perfect plan. My mom knew how much I loved her and I certainly know how much she loved me.

This morning my siblings and I went to visit my mother’s grave. We left some fresh flowers there and then we went and had breakfast together. I was glad I was able to spend time with them. My sister has turned out to be a fantastic mom in her own right and I know that my mother was extremely proud of her. And now I have what I consider to be one of the highest privileges I can think of in that I get to be a parent to my own child! I am amazed at how wonderful a mother my Jenny already is and will continue to be. Not only that, but I have a great mother-in-law that I am most thankful for. Mother’s Day is definitely alive and well all around me and I certainly have reason to celebrate some wonderful women in my life!

So is it wrong that I miss my mom so very much today? I am comforted by the great memories I have of her but most of all I am comforted because I know that one day I shall see her again in heaven. Until then, Happy Mother’s Day Mom.

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” - 1 Thess 4:13,14

Aikman is sniffing the flowers.

This was taken in October 2010.

Part 2 - God Has Given Me a New Heart

2011-05-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

This is the second part in my story of how I came to faith in Christ and how I eventually grew to be a Confessionally Reformed Presbyterian. Part 1 can be found here.

After that night, Marilyn invited us to come back to their weekly bible studies. I think we all told her we would, but I don’t remember any of the other guys ever going back again - with the exception of two of us. My good friend Chris and I really did go back the next week. And again the next. And a few more after that. At the time, I really think I was only going because I was interested in a girl from there. And of course, there was always free food! Chris on the other hand really seemed to show more of an interest in the actually bible study. I found out later that he actually used to go to church when he was younger. One night Marilyn told us that the next week the group would be going to watch a drama at one of the local churches. She wanted us to come. I can still remember Chris and me driving up to this Baptist Church. I can still remember where the church is in Abilene. We met our group there and sat down to watch the drama, “Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames”. I don’t remember much about the drama, other than the fact that it’s basically a drama about people dying and whether or not they go to heaven or hell.

At some point in the play, I remember realizing that I wasn’t actually a Christian as I had always assumed. I realized that I had lived my whole entire life for myself. At the end of the drama I remember the speaker having everyone stand. He did the traditional, “every head bowed, every eye closed” routine. He of course said some stuff about dying in our sins and I remember he posed the question, “if you were to die tonight, would you go to heaven or to hell?” I immediately knew the answer was that I would go to hell if I died that evening. The speaker then asked those who knew they’d go to hell to step out and come forward to the front so they could pray for us. Of course I peeked and I noticed Chris was making his way to the front. I knew I should go to because I certainly didn’t want to go to hell. I walked to the front and I remember someone telling me about Jesus Christ and that I needed to trust Him to save me. They explained that if I prayed a prayer after them Jesus would come into my life, I would become a Christian, and I would be saved from hell! Of course this was all good news to me, so I was ready to pray or repeat just about anything.

Now at this point in my story I feel I should take a moment to say that I now disagree with so much about what I have just written. I will be the first person to tell you why altar calls are wrong and why repeating a prayer doesn’t save anyone. With that being said, there is not a doubt in my mind that God regenerated my heart that evening. I specifically remember feeling genuinely badly about how I had lived my life up to that point. I knew I had done so many “bad” things and I knew God had to be disappointed in me. I wanted Jesus to save me and make me a new person. Most importantly, I wanted to go to heaven and not hell! As I went back to me seat, I had tears in my eyes. The rest of the group congratulated Chris and I and they assured us that we had made a good decision. Driving home that evening, Chris and I discussed our new life. I told him that I was ready to be a Christian from now on! I was going to stop cussing and stop being disrespectful to my parents. I didn’t want to be pervert anymore and I didn’t want to live for myself. The first few days after the night of the drama went well. I was committed to all the things I mentioned and for the most part, I did (or didn’t) do them. Chris started going to the church where Marilyn and most of the kids from the bible study went to. Unfortunately, I did not.

As you can probably already figure out, my newfound Christianity didn’t last long. After about a week or two trying to live my life differently in my own strength, I naturally reverted back to my old way of life. As I look back now I can recognize that a key error in my new life of faith was that I didn’t get discipled. Before the night of the drama, I didn’t know a thing about Christianity. After the drama, guess how much I now knew about Christianity? Yup, still zip! I was reverting back to the only thing I had ever known about religion and that was from my Roman Catholic background. Basically my understanding of Christianity was the Roman Catholic understanding of a type of works-based righteousness. That is why I immediately was determined not to swear or be disrespectful or commit any other host of sins anymore. After all, I was a Christian, so I should be a “good” person right? Again, I was still not going to church, I had no idea about reading a bible, and I although Chris was now my one Christian friend, we actually began to drift apart a bit since he was into church now and I wasn’t. But as I said earlier, even though I was beginning to go right back into my old lifestyle of living for myself, I truly believe that God had regenerated me that evening when I went down and prayed for Christ to come into my life. Even though I was extremely ignorant and terribly wrong about what Christianity was and meant, my prayer that night had been completely sincere. I honestly believe God was gracious in granting me the gift of faith and repentance that evening as I prayed at the altar. Even though not a lot on the outside looked differently about my life, on the inside there was something different. For the first time in my life I began to be convicted about things I did wrong.

Part 1 - Background and a New Friend

2011-05-06T16:53:00.000-07:00

A friend recently asked me to tell him the story of how I came to Christ and then how I came to become a Presbyterian. I thought about it and I decided that rather than give him the short version, I would actually write out in detail my journey of faith. I also decided that if I was writing it out, I would share it here on my blog. So here is part 1 - Background and a New Friend.

My journey into Christianity began at approximately the age of 17. Before that I was what I would describe as a “Christian atheist”. Growing up I always professed a belief in God, but I did not live as though He existed. All through life I did my own thing, only acknowledging God on Sunday when I went to church with my mother. Even then at church, any acknowledgment of God was purely obligatory. I should backtrack a bit to explain my church background as a child. As far back as I can remember, we would go to church on Sundays. Well usually. We did miss on occasion depending on if we stayed up late on Saturday night, etc. We were Roman Catholic and as such had always gone to Roman Catholic churches growing up. In fact, I don’t remember ever going to any other denomination until I was 17, so everything I knew about God, salvation, the church, and faith was what I learned from the Roman Catholic Church. I was a “good” Roman Catholic and I even received several of the RC sacraments, including baptism, first communion, confession, and confirmation. I even remember that at my confirmation when I was approximately 15-16 years old, I was asked to speak on behalf of my group because they felt I was a good representative of our peer group.

As involved in the RC church as I was, it wasn’t shortly after I made my confirmation that I stopped going to church altogether. I don’t know if it was the fact that all of my attendance in church and Sunday School was all leading up to the confirmation and now that it was achieved, I had really had no other reason to go. Or it might have just also been part of the fact that I was older now and my mom didn’t feel like dragging her 16 year old to church anymore. Whatever the reason, I basically quit church. A big part of church had also been the social aspect for me. I had several friends that I looked forward to hanging out with at Sunday school and I even met my first girlfriend there. Now that I was in high school, I had other friends to fill my social needs. I was playing football and it pretty much consumed my life. There just wasn’t room for church anymore. My interaction with God dwindled. I mentioned before that I rarely considered Him except on Sundays, but now even that once a week God-time faded. I would occasionally attend the devotionals that our football team had, but that was just more because it was the “thing” to do. I mean sure I didn’t care about God in my heart, but I didn’t want people to think that!

Like most teenagers, my social life, especially football, quickly became my god. I lived for the weekends when we had football games on Friday nights and parties on Saturday nights. Even after football season, it seemed every Friday night my friends and I would get together and just hang out. We would drive around aimlessly just looking for a party to go to or some trouble to get into. One Friday night in particular a group of friends and myself were driving around looking for someone’s house to hang out at. We drove through a random neighborhood where we spotted a nice looking house with several cars out front. What really got us excited is when we recognized one of the cars as belonging to a fellow football teammate. We were sure this had to be a great party and we weren’t going to miss it! Two car-fulls of 17 year old guys got out and went to knock on the front door of this random house. Much to our surprise, a woman in her early 50’s answered. We were not really sure what to say so somebody said, “uh is Paul here?” (He was the owner of the car out front that we recognized). “why sure!” the woman answered, “come on in and I’ll get him. I’ve got some food if you’re hungry.” Yes, that’s correct. This complete stranger, this middle-age white lady decided to let about seven black and Hispanic teenagers that she’d never met before into her nice home. Turns out there wasn’t a party there (or at least not the kind we were looking for)after all. The cars were all out front because there was a bible study there. Oh the irony! Most of us, including myself, stayed for a while anyway. No, not because of the bible study, but because there was free food and cute girls there. I could listen to them talk about Jesus for a few minutes in exchange for food and girls! I remember the lady was one of the nicest ladies I had ever met. I couldn’t get over the fact that she was so kind to this group of complete strangers. She could have easily told us to get off of her property before she called the police, but instead she invited us in, talked to us, and fed us. I’m sure it was pretty obvious to her that we weren’t “church kids”. And we weren’t. I don’t think anyone from the group I was with that night went to church regularly. But it didn’t matter to this lady. Her name was Marilyn and for whatever reason she was happy having us in her home.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - Called to Serve: Essays for Elders and Deacons

2011-05-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

This morning I finished reading Called to Serve: Essays for Elders and Deacons. This book is exactly what the title describes - it is a compilation of sixteen essays written by various authors that deal with the topic of the office of elder and deacon. I found this book to be a wealth of tremendous information. In terms of simply learning new information, this would probably be the best book I've read this year. The book is basically an introduction for men called to the office of elder or deacon. The book pretty much presumes full ignorance of the duties of those offices, so it then proceeds to cover a good outline of just about everything a man called to those office would need to know. Of course, the information covered in the book is by no means exhaustive (I'm not sure any book could be in this case) but it is definitely a good place to begin.

The majority of the essays were extremely helpful. I especially enjoyed the following: The Office Bearer's Life (I found it to be extremely convicting); Should We Allow Baptists to Join a Reformed Church? (extremely thought-provoking); Office Bearers and Church Government (extremely informative); and Surviving Tuesday Night: The Rules and Order of a Meeting (extremely helpful). I really could have listed every single essay as I think I learned something from each one.

In addition, some of the contributors include Danny Hyde, Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, Cornelis Venema, and W. Robert Godfrey. As you can see these are just a few of the heavy-hitters that contributed to this book, so I should not have to convince anyone in Reformed circles that these essays are written by wonderfully knowledgeable men of God.

In addition to the wonderful essays, the back of the book contains a few Appendixes, including an officer training guide and several recommended resources to help with training. This book would be a perfect manual for training men either coming into the office of elder or deacon or continued training for men already in office.

If I could find one thing I didn't like about the book (and this is a stretch) it's that the book is written from the opinion of those reformed churches that confess the Three Forms of Unity, so all citations and references to a confession are from the Heidelberg Catechism, The Belgic Confession, or the Canons of Dordt. Of course, these are all fine confessions that I would also say I subscribe to, but as a member of the OPC, I am more familiar with the Westminster Standards. Of course, I am sure that if one took the time, just about every reference to the Three Forms of Unity could be traced to a corresponding section of the Westminster Standards, so like I said, this is really a stretch to even consider this a weakness of the book.

In conclusion, this is a fine book on the the role of the offices of the elder and the deacon. Any man called to either of these offices would do well to read and then re-read this book. It would also be a wonderful book for a minister and/or other elders to use for training new men called to the office of elder or deacon.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - The Exemplary Husband

2011-04-27T07:37:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Exemplary Husband by: Stuart Scott. This book is basically a guide to being a Godly husband. The book is divided into four sections. The first is A Husband's Recognition. This section covers basic theology, including who God is, who we are, and what biblical marriage looks like. The next section is The Husband's Responsibilities. This section consists of five chapters including, Worshiping Christ Only, Love, two chapters on Leadership, Physical Intimacy, and Stewardship. The third section is A Husband's Resolves, which includes topics such as humility, good communications, sensitivity, and others. The final section covers those sins that a husband has to be especially on guard of, including anger, fear and anxiety, and lust.
There were some things about the book that I really enjoyed, and some parts that I wasn't a fan of. I was blessed by the thoroughness of Stuart's work. There are 21 chapters in all, so Stuart covers much ground. Also Stuart mixes biblical principles/foundations with practical advice. He also includes many examples to help men understand exactly what he is talking about. Some chapters I especially enjoyed were the ones on Love (how we are to love our wives), Responsibility, Physical Intimacy, and Lust.
The knocks against the book is that at times I felt it a bit too formulaic. For example in some sections I came away with the idea that all I have to do is follow 5 steps and my wife would be perfectly happy with me. I am often leery of books that make the Christian life a list of do's and don't and there were a few places where Stuart does just this. I would have liked to see more emphasis on simply living the life that is ours in Christ instead of do this or that.
Overall, I could definitely seeing this book being helpful to a newlywed or a man who is engaged to be married.

Baby Silva - 11 Weeks

2011-04-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning Jenny had her second appointment for us to check on baby Silva. As of Saturday, Jenny is 11 weeks. The doctor didn't really tell us much other than to say that everything looked good! (I guess I really didn't need him to say much more than that). One of the great things about our doctor is that he owns his own sonogram equipment. Apparently this is a bit rare, so the good news is that we will get to see pics of our little one each visit. I was shocked to see how much baby Silva had grown since our last visit four weeks ago! In case you missed it, below is our first picture. Our little guy/gal is the little grey blip in the bigger black space. Basically all we could see was the heartbeat flashing in this first one.

But just four weeks later and here we are:

As you can see, a big difference! It was so wonderful to see the little life on the screen. When the doctor first brought the image up, baby Silva was wiggling up a storm! The body part was literally squirming back and forth! It was so precious! According to this website, baby is approximately 1 1/2 inches long and about the size of a fig.

Our next appointment will be in another month. It's actually scheduled for May 23rd, which will be Jenny and my two year anniversary. I can't think of a better anniversary gift than to get to see another picture of the precious life that God has blessed us with.

"Behold,children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward." - Psalm 127:3

Surprise Hail Storm

2011-04-25T11:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I was in the midst of my Sunday afternoon nap when I awoke to the wonderful sound of rain falling. It was indeed a most welcome sound as record wildfires have been raging all over West Texas. I went back to sleep but woke up about 30 minutes later to get ready for evening church. It was about 4:30 in the afternoon. I'm in the bathroom when I begin to hear these loud pops. It's coming from above. At first I think to myself, "Is my roof leaking"? It was so loud it was the only reason I could think of why the rain would sound that way. Then the pops, which began sporadically, began to increase in succession. Then it hit me - it's hailing! I hurried to the front door to look out and this is what I see:

It was coming down hard. The video doesn't do justice to how hard and loud the pops were from the ice bombs raining down. Here is video from the backyard.

These videos were just of the first wave. After it stopped for a few minutes then it would start right back up again. We received at least four waves in all. The stone I pick up at the end of the above video is about the biggest size that I ever saw in our yard. It was a good golf-ball size and there were several. Our vehicles received quite a few dings in them, but thankfully no windows were broken. It could have been a lot worse for us. Many parts of Abilene had baseball sized pieces rain down. Here are some photos that my coworker took at my office.

Here's an article from the local paper about the storm, including a few more photos from around town. In all my years of living in Abilene (a collective 26), I don't ever remember getting hail that lasted as long as this storm or hail that was as big as these pieces! It was definitely an Easter afternoon to remember!

Finished Bathroom!

2011-04-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

No it didn't really take the contractor this long to finish the bathroom, I just slacked in posting the final set of pics. My apologies for the delay. Jenny and I are so excited about the way the finished bathroom came out! I told her that it came out even better than I had imagined! Our contractor really did a great job so I guess it's only fair that I give him a shout-out - call Ruiz & Sons if you have a project in the Abilene area. Lastly before the final pictures, here's one more look at the very beginning stage.

And now the after:

This is walking in the door or the same viewpoint as above.

I love the sink design

Jenny picked out the shower curtain and based the colors/theme of the rest of the room off it

I really like how this window came out in the shower. By keeping the window, it let us keep a lot of natural light in the room.

the length of this wall was a little longer than the tub, so the contractor built this little ledge. I think it's perfect for storing shampoos, soaps, etc and in a few more months, it will be an especially good spot for a little one's toys!

this is looking out from the tub. The end shelves are for linens and towels. Austin even approves of the new bathroom!

So come over for a visit and I will let you take a shower or even better test out the new throne.

Bathroom Remodel #3

2011-04-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

Here is another update on the bathroom remodel...

It's almost finished! Next update should be the finished room!

Bathroom Remodel #2

2011-04-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

As promised, thought I'd share an update on the bathroom remodel. In case you missed the first post, you can check it out here. These pics are over the course of about three days and should be in order from earliest work to most recent. It's coming along!

52 Books in 52 Weeks - The Church in History

2011-04-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Finally. I finally finished reading my most recent book, The Church in History by B.K. Kuiper. This book took me forever to read for two reasons: 1) it's a large book and 2) I moved to a new house during the course of reading. But I am finally finished now, and I can say I very much enjoyed this book also.
The Church in History comes in at a whopping 57 chapters and covers the history of the church from her inception in 33 A.D. all the way up to approx the early 1950's. I have read there are some updated versions that continue the history even on into the 1980's, but my version was an older book, having a copyright date of 1951. The book reads very much like a textbook and I believe that it is often used as one for Christian schools/homeschooling. It is written at approximately a high school level, so most readers will find it very easy to read. I do not know much anything about the author, but Kuiper seems to write from a reformed perspective. With that being said, I felt the book did not have a slant to it and it seemed to portray the differing faiths with a realistic light. This book was similar to the previous book on church history I read, The Story of the Church by Renwick, except this book was much longer and therefore more thorough. I would highly recommend this book to any of my readers interested in an a good overview on the history of the church.

Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 14

2011-04-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

In the first section of Chapter 14, Calvin discusses creation. He touches on why the creation account is important in scripture and these reasons are “as an antidote to the monstrous fables which anciently prevailed both in Egypt and the other regions of the world, but also as a means of giving a clearer manifestation of the eternity of God as contrasted with the birth of creation, and thereby inspiring us with higher admiration.” Calvin then contends that it is a foolish question to ask why God waited to create the earth and mankind. He says, “Why God delayed so long it is neither fit nor lawful to inquire. Should the human mind presume to do it, it could only fail in the attempt, nor would it be useful for us to know what God, as a trial of the modesty of our faith, has been pleased purposely to conceal.”

In section 2, Calvin tackles critics who question why God needed six days to create, rather than doing it all in one moment. Calvin contends that God was preparing the earth for Adam with good things and this shows an overall “paternal goodness of God toward the human race”. Moving on to section 3, Calvin discusses angels and demons. Calvin makes note that these are both created beings and as such are not to be worshiped. Calvin next refutes an erroneous belief that still comes up today. This is the teaching that God created good things and the devil created bad things. Calvin says this is problematic because it denies God’s glory in the creation of the world. Calvin understands people do not want to ascribe evil to God, but the reality is “it is not admitted that there is any thing naturally bad throughout the universe; the depravity and wickedness whether of man or of the devil, and the sins thence resulting, being not from nature, but from the corruption of nature; nor, at first, did anything whatever exist that did not exhibit some manifestation of the divine wisdom and justice.”

In Section 4 Calvin opposes those questions in which the Scriptures are silent on. Some of these questions are items such as when the angels were created, their ranks, and how many there are. Calvin states,

“let us here remember that on the whole subject of religion one rule of modesty and soberness is to be observed, and it is this, in obscure matters not to speak or think, or even long to know, more than the Word of God has delivered. A second rule is, that in reading the Scriptures we should constantly direct our inquiries and meditations to those things which tend to edification, not indulge in curiosity, or in studying things of no use. And since the Lord has been pleased to instruct us, not in frivolous questions, but in solid piety, in the fear of his name, in true faith, and the duties of holiness, let us rest satisfied with such knowledge.”

What a great quote! More people (myself included) would do wise to take Calvin’s advice here and rather than focus on areas where the Word is silent, we should focus on the eternal truths and stand fast to defend them. Calvin says, “The duty of a Theologian, however, is not to tickle the ear, but confirm the conscience, by teaching what is true, certain, and useful.”

In the next few sections Calvin discusses the duties of angels. They are “the ministers and dispensers of the divine bounty towards us.” Calvin also notes “…they watch for our safety, how they undertake our defence, direct our path, and take heed that no evil befall us.”

In section 13, Calvin now moves on to the topic of fallen angels. Calvin begins by reminding us that we have a very real adversary and the reason he is often described as “the god and ruler of this world, the strong man armed, the prince of the power of the air, the roaring lion..” is so that we will be “… more cautious and vigilant, and more prepared for the contest.” Calvin then goes on to describe the nature of the devil and his demons –

“Truth he assails with lies, light he obscures with darkness. The minds of men he involves in error; he stirs up hatred, inflames strife and war, and all in order that he may overthrow the kingdom of God, and drown men in eternal perdition with himself. Hence it is evident that his whole nature is depraved, mischievous, and malignant.”

So while it is important to acknowledge that we have a very real enemy and we also acknowledge that our enemy desires nothing more than to see the Kindgom of God overthrown, we must recognize that the devil and demons are limited in their power. As Calvin states, “Satan cannot possibly do anything against the will and consent of God.”

Bathroom Remodel

2011-04-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, we recently moved into my mom's old house. It is an older house so there is quite a bit of work that we have to look forward to. One of the biggest projects we are undertaking is having the bathroom remodeled. My mom originally began this project a few years back and it had slowly been coming together. Her house originally had 1 and 1/2 baths. Basically there were two bathrooms with a toilet and vanity connected by a smaller room with the tub/shower. My mom was in the process of having them converted into two full baths. She already had done the master bath but the second bathroom was never finished. So we called the contractor who had previously done the master bath and we met with him to discuss plans for the family bathroom. Here are some pics from the beginning of the project.

First, he stripped the entire bathroom. (that's Jenny walking by, not the contractor. Although if she knew how to completely remodel a bathroom, we could have saved some money.)

Then, because there was never a bath/shower in there, the plumbing has to be moved to insert one. This meant he had to jackhammer through our floor to access the pipes and rework them. FYI, the hole is really deeper than it looks. When I walked by at one point, one of the workers was standing in it just past knee-deep!

Tuesday evening Jenny, Sarah, Aikman, and myself made a trip to Lowes to get more ideas for the vanity, sink, toilet, fixtures, etc.

Here is my sis, Sarah, trying out a whirlpool tub.

Finally, when we were leaving Aikman just had to sit on one of the lawnmowers. He kept calling it a car and he tried to push the steering wheel because he wanted to honk the horn. Ha ha!

I will try to post more pics as more work is done so everyone can follow the progress of the bathroom with us.

My Busy Month of March

2011-04-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

Been a very, very busy couple of weeks around the Silva household...first last month was my birthday! My actual birthday is the 25th of March, but I was off the weekend before on the 19th/20th, so Jenny and I traveled to Aubrey to visit her parents. They generously took me out to Pappasitos where I enjoyed an ridiculously delicious meal of filet mignon fajitas with chimichurri sauce and a side of humongous grilled shrimp covered in who knows what, but it tasted amazing! Along with Jenny and her parents, we were also joined by Jenny’s grandfather on her dad’s side and his wife. They are such nice people and it was nice to get to see them again, as it had been quite some time. We traveled back home Sunday afternoon.

After a week of work, it was time to celebrate again…but first…moving time! Let me explain the back story first… After my mom passed away, my siblings and I all talked about what to do with her house. My brothers were currently living there, but it’s a pretty big house (over 1800 sq ft) for two young bachelors, so we decided that we would either sell the house and have them get an apartment or maybe myself and Jenny could move in. After meeting with a realtor and exploring our options, we all decided that Jenny and I would trade houses with my brothers. So over my birthday weekend, we did our best to move them out of my mom’s house and into Jenny and my old house, while at the same time moving us out and into my mom’s house. To say moving two houses at one time was difficult would be an understatement. We got all of the big stuff out, but we still have boxes to unpack and furniture to set up and I imagine we will for another couple of weeks. But the good news is, Jenny and I now have a bigger home!

After two days of all-day moving, by Saturday night, I was ready to relax. Everyone, except Pete was off , so we all decided we would celebrate my birthday that evening. We all loaded into the Anderson’s Tahoe (minus Pete) and headed to what is quite possibly my favorite restaurant in the world – Mary’s Café. I’ve written about Mary’s on here in the past, and I have to say it was just as good as I always remembered. We enjoyed some gigantic chicken fried steaks with all the trimmings and then headed back to Abilene. It’s a little over an hour’s drive, so by the time we got back home, it was late and everyone was tired. I asked everyone if it would be okay if we dragged out the birthday festivities one more day, and they all agreed we would do cake, ice cream, and presents the next evening after church. The next night we all went to the Anderson house to enjoy some cake and ice cream and I opened my presents. I received some wonderful gifts that were just what I asked for including lots of great gift cards to Amazon.com. A funny side note, after helping me move my 225+ books, everyone encouraged me I needed to be sure to spend all my Amazon gift cards on books for my Kindle rather than any more physical books! I think they’re right!

Here's Jenny and me at Mary's. If you're wondering about the chops, I decided to shave off my beard and decided to have some fun with it for a couple of days. Check out the chicken fried steak! As good as my two weekends of birthday celebrations were, and as excited as I am to move and get settled into Jenny and my new home, that news pales in comparison to the exciting news that I also received this last month – I found out that I’m a father!

Yes, you read that correctly. It all started on March 6th. I had to work the day shift that Sunday so I got off work at 4:00. I got home and Jenny was in the kitchen. I came in and gave her a smooch and she told me she had a surprise for me. She then proceeded to give me a card. I thought, “aww, how sweet just a random card out the blue for no reason other than to tell me how much she loves me”. But to my surprise when I opened it, it was a card congratulating me on being a new dad! Inside the card Jenny had taped a home pregnancy test showing a positive sign! It took me a second because it seemed so surreal, but I immediately looked at Jenny and she had an enormous smile on her beautiful face. We hugged and all I could do was weep tears of joy on her shoulder. The following day, Jenny made an appointment to go have some blood work done to confirm everything 100%. I was working that day, but I was able to go with her to her appointment, which was basically just giving some blood. Then we had to wait until that afternoon to find out the results. I went back to work and it may have been the longest 3 hours of my life! Finally, Jenny called me and said “congratulations dad!” I won’t go into too many details, but Jenny and I have talked about starting a family for several months now, but due to some fertility issues, conception would not be so easy. Fortunately for us, God was gracious and it was now official we were blessed with our first child!

Jenny and I told only the closest of family and we also had to tell our church family. Jenny’s first appointment wouldn’t be until Monday, March 28th. Finally the day came and I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see that ultrasound for the first time! The doctor said there was a very, very strong heartbeat and my heart just burst knowing I was seeing my child! As of this writing Jenny is 8 and ½ weeks along. Her due date is November 12th, but I’m shooting for 11/11/11. We are oh so excited and we covet your prayers for health of mama and baby. Now I will really have something to write about on this blog!

Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 13

2011-03-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

No I did not forget about my readings through Calvin's Institutes. It just took me awhile to get through chapter 13 because it is very long. There are 29 sections in chapter 13; add that to the fact that this is the chapter on the Trinity, and needless to say I was not rushing through! Okay without further delay here are some thoughts on what I read.

In Chapter 13, Calvin turns to discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. Calvin first describes the Trinity as God in three persons. Persons, argues Calvin, is the correct understanding, as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not just different essences of God, but rather persons with “peculiar properties”. Calvin next takes issue with those that would argue against the use of the word “persons” when describing the Trinity. They contend that “persons” is not actually from scripture and therefore it shouldn’t be used. Calvin counters that the term persons makes the most sense because “that three are named, each of whom is perfect God, and yet that there is no plurality of gods”. Finally Calvin adds that our language will never completely do justice in describing the Almighty but we do the best we can.

In Section 4, Calvin goes after false teachers who spew heresy. Calvin states they use “ambiguity of expression” as “a kind of hiding-place”. What Calvin is saying is that too many times, false teachers will twist scripture and use ambiguous or clouded phrasing to pass off their heresies. Rick Phillips in his commentary on this section of the Institutes brings up an excellent point when he says,

“Calvin could hardly speak in a more timely way for us, since false teachers today hate nothing more than the confessional theology of the church. Why? Because it requires them to state their teachings plainly, affirming or denying clear propositions. Calvin points out that it was only this approach that enabled the early church to nail down the evasions of Arius and defeat his heresy. Despite the complaints that such an approach enshrines human formulas over God's Word, the reality is that only by means of clear confessional theology is the church able to defend the truth of Scripture.”

And this my friends, is another reason why I love the Confessions!

Calvin then goes on to define his own terms in describing the Trinity. Calvin says there are three persons, but they have distinguishing “incommunicable properties”. In Section 8, Calvin contends against those who would deny Christ has existed eternally. Calvin says, “Nothing, therefore, is more intolerable than to fancy a beginning to that Word which was always God, and afterwards was the Creator of the world.” It is serious error to think that the Word began to exist at creation and not before. Calvin’s proof texts are John 17:5 and also John 1:1-2. Calvin continues to list evidences for Christ’s divinity through Section 13. Then beginning in Section 14, Calvin makes his case for the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Calvin’s first appeal is that the Spirit was present at creation, just like Christ was.

In section 18, Calvin begins explaining the Trinity. First, he notes that most of our analogies for the Trinity are insufficient. Calvin readily admits that the Trinity is a mystery of sorts, but the best way to understand Him is that the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Calvin goes on to say, “The whole Father is in the Son, and the whole Son in the Father, as the Son himself also declares, (John 14: 10) "I am in the Father, and the Father in me…”

Sections 23-25 contains some heavily important issues in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity. Here are some important points that Rick Phillips picks up on in these sections:

“1) the Bible certainly speaks of Jesus - i.e. God the Son - as being subordinate to the Father (the Father sends him, He does the Father's will, etc.), so we have to be able to speak of God the Son's subordination to the Father; 2) yet this subordination cannot be ontological (pertaining to his being), since Christ is very God of very God just as the Father is; therefore, 3) the subordination is economic (pertaining to his work). So we speak of Christ's economic subordination to the Father, but we deny his ontological subordination.

Calvin argues that the divine essence, shared by the whole Trinity, is unbegotten. But the persons of the Son and the Spirit are begotten of the Father (eternally, so that there never was a time when they were not). The persons are not separate from the divine essence, in which case there would be three Gods, but are differentiated from one another within the one divine essence.

Some people don't think that the Son, being begotten of the Father, can really be fully divine and eternal. But Calvin reproduces the great argument from the Nicene era that 1) if God has revealed himself as the Father, and 2) God is now as he always and eternally has been, 3) then in order for God to be Father, there has to be a Son, 4) so the eternality of God the Son bears equally on the eternality of God the Father. Either God has always been the Father, in which the Son also has always been, or else God is eternally something other than Father, in which case He has not really revealed himself to us in his Word."

In conclusion, the doctrine of the Trinity is completely biblical and must be maintained if we would consider ourselves true Christians.

The Rattlesnake Roundup

2011-03-12T20:49:00.000-08:00

Growing up in West Texas, the annual Rattlesnake Roundup was an event I had always heard much about, but had never actually attended. Well scratch it off my list now! Yesterday, Jenny, Devin, Sarah, Aikman, and I loaded up and drove to Sweetwater, TX, which is approximately 30 minutes west of us, to attend the Rattlesnake Roundup. If you're unfamiliar with what exactly a rattlesnake roundup consists of, well the name is pretty self-explanatory. According to the official website...

"The project was originaly conceived by a group of area farmers and ranchers as an attempt to rid the abundance of Rattlers that were plaguing them and their livestock. The event has grown over the past 51 years to the "WORLD'S LARGEST RATTLESNAKE ROUND-UP" with over 123 tons of Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes turned in to date."

Aside from getting to see all the creepy snakes, there are food booths, craft booths, and a small carnival. We had a lot of fun and it was a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Here are some pictures from our day.

We had to start off the trip with some most appropriate snacks.

My nephew Aikman enjoying the ride and a gummy rattler.

Here is one of snake pits where they do demonstrations. This particular snake was huge! It had to be at least 4.5 feet in length.

This one was smaller than the first snake, but just as intimidating (at least in my opinion)

Here is one being "milked" of it's venom.

Those kids are a lot braver than I!

This was a different demo area where they were skinning the snakes.

Here are Jenny and I looking very hot and sweaty, but we were having a good time!

52 Books in 52 Weeks - The Story of the Church

2011-03-09T14:39:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading an excellent intro to church history titled, The Story of the Church by: A.M. Renwick. Regrettably, I cannot remember who recommended this book to me, but it was an excellent read. It is a fairly small book, coming in at only 212 pages. Each chapter covers roughly a century of the church's history. For example, the first chapter begins in the apostolic age and the last chapter, chapter 22 covers the 20th century. I especially enjoyed this books take on the Roman Catholic church. At several places the author details why the Roman Catholic church simply cannot claim papal infallibility nor true apostolic foundation. Renwick makes the case or rather refutes the claim, that the Apostle Peter was the first pope. Perhaps my only knock on the book is that it is an older book (my copy shows a copyright date of 1963) and as such it is severely lacking on any modern church history. The book is best from the apostolic age to the early 19th century. Also the book covers the history of the church in the world, so there were a few points where I would have liked to have gone a bit deeper with what was happening with the church in the United States. Renwick simply did not go into vast detail or the book would have been voluminous. In conclusion, The Story of the Church is a great book as an intro to church history. A person who is already well-versed in church history will most likely not learn anything new, but to the saint that has yet to explore this subject, this is an excellent starting place. I highly recommend the book.

Update: It is my understanding that there is a revised copy of this book with a second author, A.M. Harmon. Apparently Harmon continues the history past where Renwick left off.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction by: Sinclair Ferguson

2011-03-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

I know I am severely behind in my reading goal of a book a week for 2011, but I am determined to catch back up and finish 52 books this year! I moved one step closer yesterday when I finished book number 5 - The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction by Sinclair Ferguson. Dr. Ferguson is one of those men that you can almost guarantee that anything he puts out will be quality, and he certainly didn't disappoint with this one. The book is basically just as the subtitle says - an introduction to several key doctrines of the Christian faith. The books does it best to go in order of the workings of God in the Christian life. For example, some of the earlier chapters deal with the Fall and our sinfulness, then Ferguson tackles regeneration, faith/repentance, justification, sanctification, and finally the last two chapters are on death and glorification. Of course those a just a few as there are 22 chapters total. While the book is weighty and theological, it is also an easy read. Most of the chapters are no more than 8 pages each. Ferguson also includes lots of scripture (always a good thing) and he also includes in each chapter hymns or poems relating to the topic. In conclusion, this is an excellent book for a new Christian who is just learning about these key themes of the Christian life. But it's also full of sound doctrine that seasoned saints will also be blessed by reading through too.

From Whence This Fear and Unbelief

2011-02-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

I'm going to try a new feature and begin sharing various hymns that I come across. Most hymns, especially those that are many years old, have excellent theology to them. Take for example this hymn written by Augustus Toplady:

From Whence This Fear and Unbelief

From whence this fear and unbelief?
Hath not the Father put to grief
His spotless Son for me?
And will the righteous Judge of men
Condemn me for that debt of sin
Which, Lord, was charged on Thee?

Complete atonement Thou hast made,
And to the utmost Thou hast paid
Whate'er Thy people owed;
How then can wrath on me take place,
If sheltered in Thy righteousness,
And sprinkled with Thy blood?

If thou hast my discharge procured,
And freely in my room endured
The whole of wrath divine;
Payment God cannot twice demand,
First at my bleeding Surety's hand,
And then again at mine.

Turn then, my soul, unto thy rest!
The merits of thy great High Priest
Have bought thy liberty;
Trust in His efficacious blood,
Nor fear thy banishment from God,
Since Jesus died for thee.

Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 12

2011-02-27T16:06:00.000-08:00

In Chapter 12, Calvin continues explaining idol worship and true worship. Calvin says, “Let it suffice to remember, that whatever offices of piety are bestowed anywhere else than on God alone, are of the nature of sacrilege."
Phil Ryken, in his commentary on Chapter 12, states,

"When God is worshiped by way of idols and images, his powers and perfections are parceled out to lesser gods and goddesses. Instead of seeing God as the locus of all majesty and grace, people look to other things in life to provide security, hope, protection, pleasure, and satisfaction.
This is an important insight about idolatry: our temptation is not simply to worship some false god, but also to worship less and less of the true God by taking away his glory a little at a time."

Calvin also goes after the Roman Catholic Church when he denounces their worship of the saints and angels. The RCC argues that there is a distinction in worship of God and worship of the saints. Latria or “honor” is reserved for God, while dulia, or “service” is offered to saints and angels. Of course, Calvin will have none of this and says that latria vs dulia is merely distinction without difference. Calvin counters, “But no man doubts that to serve is something higher than to worship. For it were often a hard thing to serve him whom you would not refuse to reverence. It is, therefore, an unjust division to assign the greater to the saints and leave the less to God.” Calvin concludes that when acts such as bowing, revering, and honoring are directed to anyone or anything other than God, we profane His honor. Calvin cites Acts 10:25-26 as an example of misplaced reverence.

My Unenjoyable Hiatus

2011-02-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

I am back from a break. Unfortuantely it was a break that I didn't care to take. On February 8 my mother passed away after a 5 month bout with cancer. She died early Tuesday morning in her sleep. I hurt that she is no longer here with me and I don't get to see her smile, eat her cooking, send her a text, or laugh with her. I rejoice that she no longer hurts, I will see her again someday, and she beholds Christ face to face.

Other than dealing with the funeral and family in town, I have been dealing with tying up many loose ends in regard to my mother's estate. I would ask for continued prayer that the remaining business affairs continue to go smoothly. Also, my siblings and I are faced with the big decision of whether or not to sell my mother's house. There is also a possibility that Jenny and I may move into it. Please pray for wisdom for us to make the best decision to the glory of God. He has been faithful through this entire time, just as I knew He would be and will continue to be.

Hopefully I will get back to my readings and studies very soon so look for more postings on those topics too.

52 Books in 52 Weeks - Twice: How I Became a Cancer-Slaying Superman Before I Turned 21

2011-02-07T04:22:00.000-08:00

As the readers of my blog may or may not be aware, at the beginning of early October last year, my mother was diagnosed with liver cancer. She is currently undergoing treatment to eradicate the illness from her body. Cancer is something that is fairly new to my family. Sure, I have known some people who were affected by cancer, and I have even known people who have passed away due to the illness, but nothing really prepares you for when it's a member of your immediate family, nevertheless, your own mother. All the different treatments and medications my mother is currently receiving and the subsequent side-effects are a completely new world to my family and me so we have been interested in reading to learn more about this process. One book that came highly recommended to me was Twice: How I Became a Cancer-Slaying Superman Before I Turned 21 by Benjamin Rubenstein. My uncle actually knows Rubenstein and he generously purchased a copy for me to read.

The book is a very interesting read. Rubenstein pulls no punches and is very candid with his story of what he went through in treating cancer, first as a 16 year old, and then again at age 19. I do have to note that Rubenstein is very frank with his story and there is some language and a story or two that some might find objectionable. Rubenstein details his life during this difficult time, describing vividly the treatments he went through, the side-effects he endured, and the emotions he dealt with. Rubenstein lets you into his world and there were several places in the book were I was completely caught up, excitedly anticipating what would happen to Rubenstein next.

Unfortunately, one area of the book I found disconcerting was that, and I say this as respectfully as possible, Rubenstein comes across as extremely arrogant for a man who has lived through two bouts of cancer. I guess I just supposed that a person who literally faced the very real possibility of death would have a more humble outlook on life. Don't get me wrong, there are several times when Rubenstein mentions how he appreciates life and how he has a changed perspective on certain things, but time and time again Rubenstein openly states that he was beating this cancer based on his own willpower as even the book's title alludes too. As a man of faith, I know that any blessing we have in life is a gift from God. To recover from cancer and be spared death is one of the most gracious gifts from God that I can think of, but Rubenstein rejects the opportunity to give all the glory to God and instead transfers most of the praise to himself. Twice was an interesting book and I do feel like I learned much more about people who deal with life-threatening disease, but I also couldn't help but come away from the story feeling sorry for Rubenstein, even though he is the one who is the overcomer.

Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 11

2011-02-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

In chapter 11, Calvin teaches against the use of images of God. Calvin states, “…as often as any form is assigned to God, his glory is corrupted by an impious lie.” Calvin notes that men worshipping idols is nothing new and notes how in times past groups have worshipped things such as the sun, the stars, and the human body. However Calvin then notes, “God makes no comparison between images, as if one were more, and another less befitting; he rejects, without exception, all shapes and pictures, and other symbols by which the superstitious imagine they can bring him near to them.” This seems pretty cut and dry to me. Calvin then gives scriptural backing for the prohibition of images of God, citing Exodus 20:4; Deut 4: 15; Isa 40:18; 41:7,29; 45:9; 46:5; and Acts 17: 29. Calvin states God is defiled “when he who is incorporeal is assimilated to corporeal matter; he who is invisible to a visible image; he who is a spirit to an inanimate object; and he who fills all space to a bit of paltry wood, or stone, or gold.”

Another excellent quote from this chapter: “Being works of men, they [created idols/images] have no authority from God, and, therefore, it must be regarded as a fixed principle, that all modes of worship devised by man are detestable.”

In section 4, Calvin notes that it is not only sculptures that are forbidden, but any image formed by an artist whatsoever. In section 5 Calvin counters the argument which says, "… images are the books of the unlearned”, or that images help uneducated people who cannot read learn about God. Calvin’s response: “every thing respecting God which is learned from images is futile and false.” Calvin maintains that scripture 1)prohibits images of God and 2) those images will never properly portray God anyway.

So why do men make idols? The answer is because men want to fashion God into their own idea of Him.

“The human mind, stuffed as it is with presumptuous rashness, dares to imagine a god suited to its own capacity; as it labours under dullness, nay, is sunk in the grossest ignorance, it substitutes vanity and an empty phantom in the place of God. To these evils another is added. The god whom man has thus conceived inwardly he attempts to embody outwardly. The mind, in this way, conceives the idol, and the hand gives it birth. That idolatry has its origin in the idea which men have, that God is not present with them unless his presence is carnally exhibited, appears from the example of the Israelites: "Up," said they,"make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wet not what is become of him," (Exo 22: 1) They knew, indeed, that there was a God whose mighty power they had experienced in so many miracles, but they had no confidence of his being near to them, if they did not with their eyes behold a corporeal symbol of his presence, as an attestation to his actual government.”

In section 11, Calvin notes that not all visible representations are unlawful. He acknowledges that sculpture and paintings are gifts from God, but must be used lawfully and purely.

Institutes, Book 1, Chapters 9 and 10

2011-02-05T03:35:00.000-08:00

Chapter 9

Calvin goes after those that would say we don’t need the Word, but instead we are led by God’s Spirit. Calvin argues that the Holy Spirit always confirms the Word of God and the Spirit and the Word go hand and hand. Calvin says, “Hence the office of the Spirit promised to us, is not to form new and unheard-of revelations, or to coin a new form of doctrine, by which we may be led away from the received doctrine of the gospel, but to seal on our minds the very doctrine which the gospel recommends.”

Here is Paul Helm’s commentary on Chapter 9:

“The Spirit not only illumines and authenticates the Word, his authenticating is also tested by the Word. In his theological thought Calvin is quite fond of the idea of two things being linked by a 'bond' - the knowledge of God and of ourselves, for example, and justification and sanctification. Here it is Word and Spirit. 'For by a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God's face, shines'. (1.9.3)”

So for Calvin the Spirit and the Word formed an unbreakable bond, and this bond is very necessary. It is necessary because either one without the other falls short. For example, if one would favor the Spirit and reject God’s Word, the problem arises of how to benefit from the Spirit’s work. J. Mark Beach in Piety’s Wisdom says,

“…since satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14), we cannot distinguish his work from the Spirit’s work unless we make use of Scripture and look for the discerning mark of Scripture. For, again, Scripture is the Spirit’s work (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). As its author, He cannot vary and differ from Himself” (p. 35).

Then on the other hand the Holy Spirit is the one who illuminates the Scriptures to us and makes us accept them as the living Word of God. A man can read the bible from cover to cover, yet if the Spirit is not working in him, he will profit nothing.

Chapter 10

Calvin beings chapter 10 by explaining that he is now moving on to explain how God has chosen to reveal Himself in scripture, or as Phil Ryken puts it, “Beginning in chapter 10, Calvin moves beyond general revelation (what God has revealed of his character in creation) to special revelation (what God has revealed about himself through his Word).”

Calvin puts it this way: “Moreover, the knowledge of God, which is set before us in the Scriptures, is designed for the same purpose as that which shines in creation, viz., that we may thereby learn to worship him with perfect integrity of heart and unfeigned obedience, and also to depend entirely on his goodness.”

In the last part of chapter 10, Calvin emphasis that there is but one true God when Calvin states “let the reader observe that the Scripture, in order to direct us to the true God, distinctly excludes and rejects all the gods of the heathen”

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

2011-02-04T05:09:00.000-08:00

Depending on where you live, you have probably been affected in someway by this huge winter storm that has come through the U.S. this week. Abilene got it bad (or at least really bad by our standards). It all started Monday evening. I got off work at 4 that afternoon and I kept hearing rumors about the big snow were were supposed to get that night. Since just a week ago, we had been forecasted snow and received absolutely zero precipitation, I was a bit skeptical. I was dead wrong. That evening around 9:30 the thunderstorms began. We got rain for a good two hours. Then about midnight the rain transitioned to snow. And it snowed. And snowed. And snowed. I'm not sure when it stopped exactly but when I woke up the next morning, this was my view from my front porch.

Jenny was supposed to be at work at 7:15 that morning, but I told her I didn't know if we were going to make it. There were already two full-size pickups stuck on my street. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention all the rain that we received before the snow came had by this point frozen. So basically all our streets were covered in approximately 2-3 inches of solid ice covered by snow. According to the news, we received anywhere from 3-6 inches of snow, but I had drifts around the house and car where it was a good 10-12 inches.

Long story short, Jenny and I made it to her work. I was off Tues and Wednesday so I drove her. Fortunately Jenny works only about 1/4 mile from our house, but even then it took me probably 15 minutes to get there and back home. (Normally takes all of 4 minutes). I just stayed in the house the rest of the day (the temp was like 11 with windchill of -5) until it was time to pick Jenny up at 4:00pm. Again, I made it out without too many problems, and we took a short trip to put gas. I did slip and fall while pumping gas (sorry no video) and we momentarily got stuck trying to drive away from the gas pump due to the entire concrete area at the gas station being one giant ice skating rink.

After driving to drop and pick Jenny up and then our short excursion to the gas station, my car was pretty gunked up underneath with snow/slush/ice/random frozen things. I didn't think anything of it until the next morning....

Wednesday morning Jenny and I woke up early as she was again supposed to be at work at 7:15am. I went out and warmed up the car but when I went back out to see if we could get out, the car would not move at all. I thought at first that I was just stuck on the ice and not getting traction, but then I noticed that my entire wheel well from the tire to the car was completely frozen solid. I had ice filling the entire wheel well space around my wheels. All the slush from driving around the day before had frozen solid underneath my car! Needless to say, we weren't going anywhere. Jenny called in and we spent the day thinking about how cold it was outside.

That night I had to be at work at midnight. Unfortunately, law enforcement doesn't get the option to stay at home when the weather's bad. Fortunately, there are some perks such as having a Texas Highway Patrol Trooper come and pick you up and give you a ride to work. So I went to work and worked until 8am Thursday morning. I got a ride home from another trooper and Jenny got a ride to work from Devin, our kind brother-in-law, who was just getting off work at 7, so he swung by in his Tahoe and picked her up. One of Jenny's coworkers brought her home that afternoon. We tried again to see if my car would move, and although we made a little progess, ultimately it was still not going anywhere. I got another ride to work last night (Thursday) and that brings me to now. I believe the high temp since Monday night has been 18 degrees, so absolutely nothing has thawed. The high today is supposed to be 32, so I don't know if anything will thaw. Saturday is the first day we are forecasted to be above freezing so hopefully we will thaw out then. The bad news is the forecast for Monday...more snow!

Institutes Book 1, Chapter 8

2011-02-04T03:58:00.000-08:00

The scriptures are not written as man-made philosophies or humanism. Instead they are raw in the sense that the truth is laid out there rather than interwoven with minced words. Calvin says, “How peculiarly this property belongs to Scripture appears from this, that no human writings, however skilfully composed, are at all capable of affecting us in a similar way.” Scriptures move us in a way no other writing can.
Calvin also says, “in regard to the Holy Scriptures, however petulant men may attempt to carp at them, they are replete with sentiments which it is clear that man never could have conceived.” The scriptures are full of ideas that man would never have thought up on his own. I have heard this before in regard to the view of man posited in the scriptures. For example, if the bible were written by men, they would have never portrayed man so lowly, so fallen, so wicked. Instead man would be portrayed as more heroic, rather than a complete failure apart from God.
Lastly from the study guide Piety’s Wisdom: “…Scripture bears witness to its own authenticity. It is confirmed by miaracles, by fulfilled prophecies, and by God’s preservation of it; but the divine contents of Scripture also testify to its authority and authenticity.“