Former presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee hosts a new show on the Fox News Network called “Huckabee”.
The show debuted this past weekend. Unfortunately, I missed the premiere episode, which featured Elisabeth Hasselbeck (from The View), Geraldine Ferraro, and Dave Ramsey. Hopefully I’ll catch a rerun of it!
The show airs on both Saturday and Sunday evenings on Fox News at 7 pm Central Time.
Today our church had a unique worship experience. Normally, we have two services on Sunday morning: one with traditional music; and one with contemporary music. Today we had just one service with a blend of traditional and contemporary music. But it was more than that. It was lighting like our church had never seen. It was sounds like our church had never heard (a five-person band with keyboards, acoustic guitar, lead guitar, bass guitar and drums). It was an amazing team of singers. It was a massive wooden cross that was center stage. It was transitions between different parts of the experience that were smooth and fluid. It was a terrific and powerful message. And it was an alter call that brought most of the people in attendance to the stage.
It was a very special service that I believe people will remember for years to come. It took a lot of effort by a lot of people to make this service so special… so much effort that it wouldn’t be feasible to have this kind of service every week. But that’s ok… it’s exciting to see people who put on this service to honor God in such a special way. And the people who attended were blessed.
One of the big challenges for parents today is keeping their kids safe on the Internet. It’s just too easy for kids to find pornography, gambling, chat sites and other bad sites. This is where content filtering software… software that blocks inappropriate sites from your computer… comes into play.
A free option is OpenDNS. OpenDNS allows you to filter web sites by category (adult, gambling, chat, etc), and you can do so for your entire household. If you have more than one computer in your house, you need only install one small program on one computer, change the DNS settings on your router and you’re good to go. This makes OpenDNS a great solution for larger environments as well, such as schools, churches, libraries or community centers.
Give it a try!
We don’t have children, but we still use OpenDNS in our home. The original reason I choose OpenDNS was because their servers, I believe, were more reliable, more secure and faster than my own ISP DNS servers. When we discovered they also offered content filtering, it only made the product better. Afterall, we do have kids visit here from time to time and it protects us from accidentally viewing something inappropriate.
I got a handwritten letter last week from my Dad. My Dad is 82 years old and its the first time he’d ever written me.
My Dad had some really cool and kind things to say to me and it was a very encouraging letter. He was prompted to write the letter (and three other letters to my siblings) after attending a class entitled “Letters From Dad” at his local church. It’s a letter I’ll cherish because it’s in my Dad’s hand-writing and it is (for now anyway) one of a kind!
Thanks, Dad!
We all have had relationships in our lives that have influenced us in our walk with Jesus Christ.
I was listening to a sermon podcast recently and the speaker asked the audience to think of a person in their lives who influenced them the most to become followers of Jesus. I started thinking about that for my own life and I’m going to share what I came up with.
I thought of four people and each of them influenced me at a different stage of my life. Although I grew up in the church, I had fallen away during my college years and early 20s.
1. A friend. Around 1990 (before I was married), a friend of mine invited me to church. I decided to go in large part because she was so excited and passionate about being a Christian. Since I had a church background, I figured it was worth checking out. It was and I was hooked.
2. My wife. I continued my life as a committed Christian until sometime in the mid to late 1990s. At that time, I started to fall away from church and from Christ, but my wife did not. She continued to go to church. She didn’t often try to talk to me about getting my life back on track with Christ, but I saw her going and over time that influenced me greatly.
3. My co-worker. About the time my wife was talking to me a little more about going to church, I discovered that a friend and co-worker of mine was a devoted follower of Christ. I had no idea, and as I learned more about his spiritual life, it influenced me. I wanted to live a life like him.
4. My Pastor. Some people might think this is a cop-out… everyone who goes to church is influenced by their pastor. But in my case, my pastor is also my good friend and I deeply respect his abilities as a leader, a teacher and a parent. He is a wise man, and a man I can learn a lot from.
How we live our lives in this world has an impact on others; an impact that we usually are not aware of. In this case of my friend in 1990, we never had any deep spiritual conversations or debates about why I should go to church. She just lived the life and I noticed. My wife didn’t pressure me into going to church; she just lived the life and I noticed. My co-worker didn’t try to convince me I needed to go to church; he just lived the life and I noticed.
If you’re a follower of Christ, don’t underestimate the influence you have by living your life for Christ.
What song was #1 in the US when you were born?
Check this site to find out.
“Ticket To Ride” by the Beatles was #1 when I was born. As a Beatles fan, I think that’s pretty cool….
