Ninas Family Missional Life

Which and Whose Gospel?                 This blog will be a little different.  I have been in a cocoon the last several weeks after listening to a sermon series by Andy Stanley call Brand:New (click the words for the series).  I recently taught a Sunday School lesson based on my cocoon and gizzard grinding in my mind and wanted to share it.  You will need your Bible, as I am not going to put the entire Scripture passages, just the references.  Prepare yourself to be challenged.  I continue to be in my cocoon about this, and members of the class I taught have told me they are still wrestling with it in their minds and hearts.  Without further ado  here it is!                 What is in this picture?  You probably said “an apple.”  Is there anything I can do to that apple to make it any more apparent that it is an apple.  I could quarter it so you could see the inside, but I cannot add anything that makes it more an apple than it already is.  Sometimes an apple is an apple.   

"The silence as all creation holds its breath while God creates another African Sunset." Reference  Psalm 19:1-6   The Calling        Have I ever told you I love to write.  It is very cathartic for me.  I seem to have a 6 liter heart for feeling and emotions, and it almost becomes infected if I don't purge it regularly by writing.   So what you read may not always be cogent or well formed, but it is certainly real.        It is that time of year again.  School has once again begun, and  Rosemont Baptist Church is having its missions conference.   Al Jackson from Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, Alabama, was the key note speaker at the banquet last night.  It was 32 years ago that Pastor Al led a marriage counseling group that Lynne and I attended before eloping.   His text was Luke 9:57-62.   The text is about counting the cost of following Jesus ...  of being obedient to the calling in Matthew 28:19-20 ... in being a selfless servant of the one true king.  

                 I came upon an analogy today that congealed how my mind works, and it brought two recurring themes to resolution for me.  My brain is analgous to a chicken gizzard.  You chickens swallow small stones that stay in their gizzard to help them process and grind food (especially grain).  The small stone in my brain is Scripture I have memorized and the Holy Spirit.  Often I will hear or read something, and it goes into my "gizzard brain" for processing.  What follows has just come out of the gizzard and writing it down helps me digest.         Norman Vincent Peale is much maligned by Christians for his emphasis on the power of positive thinking.  I have to confess to not having read the book.  However, I think that used in the correct way positive thinking is a beneficial Christian trait.  Let me elucidate!         One of my favorite Christian non-fiction books is If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat   by John Ortberg.  Th

“ You know, some people say that he talks to the animals. The aborigines call him Jabba-Jahda-Ah-Der-Ahd, which means The Crocodile Who Walks Like a Man .”                                        -Walt in Crocodile Dundee II              Last April I wrote a blog titled, “What’s in a Name?”    It talked about representing the name of Jesus in our walk.    This is not a rehash of that topic.  However it is about names.    If you know me well, there is always a story before the application.  So bear with me while I set up the topic. Mather AFB Training Class             An   aviator call sign   or   callsign   is a   nickname   given to a military pilot, flight officer, and even some enlisted aviators. This call sign is a substitute for the aviator's given name, and is used on flight suit and flight jacket name tags, painted/displayed beneath the officer's or enlisted aircrewman's name on aircraft fuselages or canopy rails, and in   radio   conversatio

                   I have been mulling this blog for over a week. You might use the word ruminate if I were a bovine creature or a goat.   The blame lies with my friend Alexa Lowery, a teacher at Destino del Reino in Siguatepeque, Honduras . She maintains a blog at home during the summer and on a mission called Causa di Mi Nombre .   As much as I enjoy reading her blog, it is very spiritually challenging to read her blog because she challenges me to stretch my faith. In her April 18 th blog, “ Teacher, what is peace to you? ” she finished with the challenging question, “What is peace to you?”   Thus I began my journey of rumination and mulling. A heartfelt thanks to Alexa for starting me on my journey. My thoughts start in Joshua 4:1-7.   I have always loved this passage of Scripture. I once heard a pastor preach a sermon entitled “Spiritual Mile Markers” using this passage.   My friend Terry has a bowl (he is from Texas, so you know it is a big bowl) of stones with words and

     If you are familiar with NCIS (who isn't), you know about Gibb's Rules.  From whence do they come?    Well, I found this at NCIS Wiki . It was revealed in the last few minutes of the Season 6 episode,  Heartland (episode)  that Gibbs's rules originated from his first wife,  Shannon Gibbs , where she told him at their first meeting that "Everyone needs a code they can live by." The only rule of Shannon's personal code that is quoted is either her first or third: "Never date a lumberjack." Years later, after their wedding, Gibbs began writing his rules down, keeping them in a small tin inside his home which was shown in the Season 7 finale episode,  Rule Fifty-One (episode) . Though he uses it often we almost never see the tin. The knowledge of the rules's origins is left as a mystery to the people that Gibbs works with, though some of them do make concentrated efforts to find out.  Anthony DiNozzo  makes several attempts to find out