Grandkids

I am looking forward to this weekend, we get to keep our grandkids. Jody and Sarah are going on a marriage retreat with their church and we get to spoil, I mean keep our grandgirls. I heard on the news that the mother can help choose the sex of the baby. If the prospective mom eats breakfast every morning before she gets prego, and if she eats food like oatmeal for breakfast, she is more likely to have a boy. But, we have grandgirls, and grand they are, and we are about to add another grandgirl to the mix with Zoe. So until and after we get some grandboys, I will continue to love and be loved on by my girls. After all, is it not every mans dream to have a house full of beautiful girls? Here are some recent pics of my girls and family.

Smile Jody smile, hey, is the sun bright?? Everybody open your eyes!

Theory of Knowledge, part 2

Well, I had absolutely no comments on the Theory of Knowledge post. So that can only mean the either no one reads this or everyone is waiting with baited breath to see what answers I wrote, so here they are....

Theory of Knowledge

1. When should we trust our senses to give us truth?

The only truth our senses can give us is the truth of sight, sound, taste and feel, and then what they sense isn’t always correct. Sometimes what we think we see, hear, feel or taste isn’t right, therefore it isn’t truth. There is absolute truth and everything else measures against it. That absolute truth is God and His Son Jesus. Jesus said in John 14:6 "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (NIV). Doing something just because it feels right will get us into trouble, we must know truth and trust Him. We can do this by knowing His Word. Senses will mislead us, as in the case of two eyewitness of the same accident trusting their senses of sight and sound and yet having two different stories. Yet if a video replay were shown both would have some element of truth to their story, but both would have some elements of falsehood. Trusting our senses for truth will let us down and disappoint us.

2. “Seek simplicity and distrust it” (Alfred North Whitehead). Is this always good advice for a knower?

If you are going to distrust it, why seek it? Just because something is simple does not make it wrong, and just because it is complicated does not make it right. Jesus said in Matthew 11:29 “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” (NIV). This is a statement that would be made by a rabbi to a prospective student. And it was an invitation for that student to come and learn. When an ox was in the yoke it did not have to worry about where it was going, all it had to do was walk where it was lead. When a student was taught by a rabbi he did not have to worry, just learn, this was simple.

When we are a knower, it should make some things in life simpler. If our knowledge makes something in life simpler, should we distrust what we know? We should always be learner, but that doesn’t make what we know wrong!

3. “There can be no knowledge without emotion…until we have felt the force of the knowledge, it is not ours” (adapted from Arnold Bennett). Discuss this vision of the relationship between knowledge and emotion.

Being a minister I am passionate about what I know. If we know something and have no emotion about it, it is simply head knowledge, just facts that we can quote; like the answers on a test that we have memorized and as soon as the test is over we forget it all. But when we know something and emotion is attached to it, we know that it is in the core of our being. Like a salesman that is really sold on the product he is selling, he is excited about that product; but one that isn’t will have a hard time selling anyone on his product.

Find a person's passion and you will find their knowledge and emotion entwined in such a manner that you could never unravel nor untangle them.

Now that you have read my answers, let me hear some of yours.
until next time.....

Looking for Help

So last night, my wife and I are sitting at the table by the sliding doors, the ones leading into the backyard and we heard our black lab, Maxi, hit the doors twice. We didn't know if she was trying to catch something or what, so we opened the door to see. Maxi came in muddy and dripping with water, she had been in her pool, but I could tell that something wasn't right by the way she was acting. She will not usually come right into the house, she will put her head in and look around for the cats, they are also black and this seems to amaze her. But this time she came right in, dripping water and leaving muddy footprints. My wife yelled to get her out, but we both soon realized that something was wrong. When I looked at her mouth it was wet and bloody. My wife held her and I opened her mouth, she had a bone stuck crosswise in her top teeth. I tried several times to pull it out but it was wedged in tight, of course when you have a large, strong dog that wants help but doesn't want to stand still for it, that doesn't help the cause. Finally I got her mouth open enough to get a good look at the bone to see which end was in the least and pulled on that end and released the bone. She was one grateful dog, and still is today.
You know this is the way we are with our Heavenly Father all too often, we go to Him for help but we don't want to stand still for it. We know that we need help, we don't know for sure what needs to be done, but we know how God should do it. Maxi came to the door looking for help, she knew where to find it, and was grateful when it was over. She was afraid, this bone that was going to taste so good turned into pain and fright. But she came to her master (Becky) for the help she had to have. This dog who will not normally allow anyone to love on her, allowed Becky to love on her and she enjoyed it.
Is there a lesson to be learned here? I think so, who knows maybe I will use this in a sermon.

Theory of Knowledge

So my wife's niece sent me a request, she is in this philosophy class and needed a theologian to answer some questions, and she must not know any real ones, so she called on me. (Ha ha, I sure she knows many more qualified than myself)
Anyway here is the e-mail she sent me and the questions;


This is Lauren and I was wondering if I could use you as a human resource for my Theory of Knowledge class. It’s a philosophy class and I figured that a theologian like yourself could help me. If you could answer a few questions in the most professional and philosophical way, I would very much appreciate it.

1. When should we trust our senses to give us truth?
2. “Seek simplicity and distrust it” (Alfred North Whitehead). Is this always good advice for a knower?
3. “There can be no knowledge without emotion…until we have felt the force of the knowledge, it is not ours” (adapted from Arnold Bennett). Discuss this vision of the relationship between knowledge and emotion.



So how would you answer these???

I will give you the answers I sent her in a few days.


She also said in her e-mail;

p.s- Its sort of due…this Tuesday…haha
(This was Monday evening)


By the way, just so you know, I love Lauren and I would have stayed up all night to help her, as it turned out I didn't need to, and this was fun and it was an honor to be asked by her. Maybe seminary is paying off. Let me hear from you.

Springtime in the Yard

Well, I have spent two days working in my yard, anyone who knows where my house is knows that I have a large yard. But I spent Friday and Monday working on my riding mower and filling in holes the dogs have dug, raking leaves, hauling firewood back to where I store it in the summer, cleaning and mowing really slow and low to help clean acorns, leaves, dogie piles and other junk out of the yard. Today I am a bit sore but the yard does look good. Does this mean that I am finished with my springtime yard cleaning? No, I still need to rake acorns out of the flower beds and get ready to plant flowers, and I also need to sow more shady grass seed. Is it worth it, I like to think so, and I do like to have a nice yard. My goal is to get the yard looking as nice as it did back when my grandfather lived in the house, he liked a nice yard also.
I would also like to get a patio with new steps out my back door poured this summer, but I must get a new roof first. Always something to be done, and it always seems to take money, money I don't have. Like the man said, "I should have been born rich instead of so good looking," OK, maybe I missed out on both.
But it is springtime in Texas, and it is grand; warmer weather, more wind, spring rains, tornado's, spiders and bugs, aah, springtime in Texas.
As the song says, "When it's roundup time in Texas, and the bloom is on the sage. Then I long to be in Texas, just a riding on the range."
Last time I rode the range......my wife turned the burner on. (Always leave em laughing.)

Oh my aching back

Have you ever had a hurt back? I broke mine about 18 years ago, my back and my hip, and ever since then I can hurt my back for no apparent reason. Take last night for example, I turned over in bed and I felt my back pull wrong. And now today my back hurts, not enough to stop me, just enough to remind me that it hurts. Of course it doesn't help that I don't weigh what I should, I'm a few pounds over weight, OK, a lot of pounds over weight. Maybe I should start running with my son-in-law, no that wouldn't work, he would run off and leave me and I would be left throwing rocks at him, or worse, passed out in the street with some dog biting me. I guess I need to be more diligent about going to the gym.
I have heard that you can eat to lose weight, I eat to lose weight but it always seem to find me. I have also heard to stop drinking soft drinks and you will lose weight, I stopped drinking soft drinks, no weight loss. Maybe if I stop eating chips and bread and potatoes and meat and carrots and peas and beans and food???
Anyway, I used to be thin, at least thinner, a lot thinner than now, but that was before I broke my back and hip. Let's see, can you help me think up a few more excuses. I think that it is really up to me to lose the weight that I want to lose. You know, "If it's to be, it's up to me!"
Anyway, think thin, think thin, think thin....where's the ice cream?

Deadlines!

Deadlines, we all have them, with our job, family or whatever, we all have them. As a pastor of a church I have deadlines every week, and the biggest one is Sunday morning sermons. Some people think that all a preacher has to do is get up in front and start talking and a sermon comes out. But did you know that on the average a 30 minute sermon takes 20 hours of prep? And did you realize that we must seek out the Lord's will about what to preach before all of that prep work can begin. Now I can only speak for myself but I want to make sure that everything I preach lines up with the Word of God, saying it just because it sounds good doesn't work. I had a man tell me that a preacher could preach on whatever he wanted to. I guess that some do, maybe they have an ax to grind and decide that it is OK to do it from the pulpit, But what we must always remember is that God will hold ministers, preacher, pastors accountable for what is preached from their pulpit. That is one reason why I am so picky about who stands behind the one that I am responsible for. I believe that God holds us to a higher standard because we are ministers of the Gospel. Proverbs 30:5-6 says, "Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him. 6 Do not add to His words, Lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar." (NKJV)
We must all be very careful of the words we speak, not just in front of the church, but in front of everyone, especially in front of those who don't know Jesus. We must keep control of our tongue. James 1:26 says, "If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless." (NIV)
So remember, no matter how important the deadline, it isn't worth a tongue that doesn't represent God well. Let others see Jesus in you.
We all have deadlines, if we are a student, we have homework that is due or a test that is coming up. If we are parents we sometimes seem to have deadlines every day. In our job we have deadlines, some more important than others, but the fact is that we all have deadlines, it's not the deadlines that tell who we are, but it is how we handle those deadlines. After all what is a deadline? It is a line that is at the end of a given amount of time, it is when the clock stops, it is showtime. So remember when your next deadline comes up it is your time to shine. Shine Bright!

Mid-Week Prayer Meeting

I'm sitting here waiting for everyone to show up for Wednesday prayer meeting and Bible study. This is always a great night, with our reFuge (youth) and Kidzone kids and Adults we usually have anywhere between 60 and 100. It's always a great night for a lot of reasons, there is always lots of energy with the kids, but the sound of kids is life for a church, todays kids is tomorrow's church and it is up to us to train them in the ways of the Lord. We always have at least 2 van loads and sometimes 3, of just kids. It is always a loud and exciting night that I look forward to every week. Well kids are showing up, better go!!

Grandkids and Life

My daughter is 17 weeks along with her first, she sends out weekly updates on the development of her child. The updates let us know what is developing on her baby at this time, by the way it is about the weight of a turnip. I love being a dad, I loved raising our children, being involved in every area of their lives. Everything from baseball to raising pigs, from music to learning how to ride horses, from learning about God to a personal relationship with Jesus, from birth to death, I love being a dad. But, being a grandad is even better, things bother me less as a grandfather, or should I say Papaw. I think that I was more concerned with what other people thought when we were raising out kids, now I don't care. I am more concerned with just loving and enjoying them, spoiling them and sending them home, mom and dad get to worry about the rest. Being grandparents is a real blast, and I know that my wife and I, Mamaw and Papaw, have the best grandkids in the world. That's why they are called GRANDkids.