Things have been pretty slow in the blog world lately, as you’ve noticed. Just been pretty busy; not finding much time to write about all the stuff going on. I’ll hopefully get to it next week. We’ll see.
Got back fairly late on Sunday from Thanksgiving in the Thumb, which was quite fun. Lots of family time, free time to do considerable reading (Surprised by the Voice of God by Jack Deere–I highly recommend it for intellectuals like myself struggling to surrender to movements of God that are beyond explanation), and fun time with the Steakers. During Warehouse basketball I had what one of my friends claims was one of the best ally-oop dunks he’s seen at the Warehouse. Fun stuff.
I had Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and Wayne and Joyce Keim, parents of one of my best friends. It was good times, just wish Darin could have been. The rock star that he is, he had a show the night before and got back pretty late and didn’t make the trip.
Saturday was family Thanksgiving day. Eric and Andrea’s families pulled in soon after midday and we had dinner around 2 or 3. REAL good food. REAL good. I had a good time playing with Chase — and watching Chase and Kristin play. Though they’re about four years apart, they still like playing together and Chase is doing an increasingly good job of being a good “big brother” of sorts.
Eric and I had a good time playing a game from our childhood: Crossbows and Catapults. We couldn’t really use the crossbows since we were playing on carpet, but building mini castles and then launching the tokens at each other’s kingdoms was classic. I won the first five or six much to his frustration, but he broke through with a couple good victories before it was all said and done. He vows to purchase it for Brody and Lane when they’re old enough to battle….though I doubt they’ll need any game to convince them to duke it out. Eric and I sure didn’t.
When I got back to Jackson Sunday around 9 (I-75 was backed up for some unknown reason), it was too late to conference call with Clark to plan for small group, so that had to be pushed back to Monday. I worked and worked out late on Monday, so when I got home at 8:30, I had to go right into small group planning and then grabbed something to eat around 10:15.
Tuesday was equally busy. I got back from work around 5:30 and felt ZERO percent full of God and completely incapable of being used at small group. So, I spent until 6:10 in my room praying and worshiping and making sure I was filled with him before going to small group. Things turned out great. Clark did a great job of leading the group through our discussion, which revolved around the truth Jesus delivered to establish the Kingdom.
In midst of our Kingdom of God study, we’re looking at how Jesus established the Kingdom. In Luke 4:18-19, he delivers his mission statement and from that we pulled that he established the kingdom with a Gospel of truth, power and freedom. Clark did truth yesterday, Scott will be doing power next week and I’ll focus on freedom the next week.
Tonight was church at Real Life Ministries. And I just continue to be amazed and how quickly God has reconciled pretty much all the reasons I used to have for not going there. I want to do this topic justice, so I won’t get into details now. But it’s pretty exciting.
Have a good Thursday. I have dental work a smidge after noon tomorrow, so if you want to cast a few prayers up…that things would go smoothly, I’d appreciate it.