Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call." With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation." Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Pray. Then carefully read the text from Acts 2
1. What does Peter tell his audience to do?
2. Once they did this, then what did they do?
3. Where did they meet?
4. How was the world around them reacting?
5. What is God doing with all this?
Sunday, May 03, 2009
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Wow, another new week!
Well, I survived the Mini just fine. I ran it in 1.44.22 and finished in the top 3000 out of 35,000 plus. That feels good.
My knee really didn't cause me any problems. It locked up some after it was over, but, hey, that's fine. I think it will be fine.
I really enjoyed running the Mini. It sure is different from the smaller, local races! My biggest challenge was not having anyone to key off of. In local races I tend to gauge my performance on where I am in relationship to the total field and to a few specific individuals. I didn't have any of that at Indy. I never saw a soul I knew until it was over.
All that's OK, I just need a different strategy for bigger races. I am pretty satisfied with my performance. I had visions of hitting 1.40, but I just couldn't get it done. I was 10 minutes faster than the half marathon I ran in February; that's significant.
Now what? Continue on the path to a Boston qualifying time. I think I am going to try for it on November 7 at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. I think a few others from the area are going to run it as well. We'll form a training group sometime this summer.
I may ramble on some more about Mini later on. Enough for now.
I've been thinking about the swine flu a lot. I have thought about it so much that I think I'll smoke some baby back ribs on Saturday.
Luke and his girlfriend, Caroline, are coming home tomorrow and will be here until Tuesday. One of his food requests is ribs. Glad to help out.
Today is Respect for Chickens Day.
I have a lot of respect for chicken, especially after an 8 hour marinade in my special, secret concoction, followed by some time on the grill. Apply a special sauce and surround it with a baked potato and corn.
I think I need to eat breakfast.
Continuing on the food theme...
The women folk in our family decided and then dictated that all the men in the family would do the cooking for Mother's Day, which is Sunday.
Once I heard of this dictate, I immediately replied, via a text message sent by Kedra, "I call brisket!" Looks a little more smoking for me.
I really do need to go eat breakfast.
Last week I quietly began a new effort to reach out to our Bread of Life food pantry folks. The Bread of Life Church met for the first time, and we had 2 in attendance, including me!
I am trying to establish a simple, informal worshiping community and am excited by it. Matthew 18:20 is a key verse for all this! We meet at 3:30 on Sunday afternoons in the old building. I would really appreciate your prayers as we strive to share the love of God with others.
From The Writer's Almanac, regarding Cinco de Mayo.
Today is Cinco de Mayo, which celebrates Mexico's defeat of French invaders at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Cinco de Mayo has actually become a bigger holiday in the United States than in Mexico, where it is mostly a regional holiday in Puebla.
I'm always amazed when I read that scripture reference at how many people were saved in one day--3000. I can't imagine an ordinary group of men reaching so many people in such a short period of time w/o the intervention of the Holy Spirit. I know we don't like to admit that we don't have complete control over whether we choose salvation or not, but I don't see how anyone could downplay the role of the Holy Spirit in preparing our hearts to receive God's message.
Donna
How big is your vocabulary?
Did you know that you soon will have One Million Words to choose from?
"The average persons vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words out of these million that are available. A person who is linguistically gifted would only use 70,000 words."
This brings to mind something that I heard about a few weeks ago. A man decided to read through the entire Oxford Dictionary. It's 22,000 pages comprising several volumes.
Man reads entire Oxford English DictionaryAmmon Shea, 37, who has been dissecting dictionaries since the age of 10, spent a year absorbing 59 million words, from A to Zyxt - the equivalent of reading a John Grisham novel every day.
Cooped up in the basement of his local library, the removal man from New York would devote up to 10 hours a day painstakingly making his way through all 20 volumes of the OED - helped by cup after cup of very strong coffee.
Every time he came across an interesting word, he jotted it down, fearful that he would not remember its meaning.
Among his favourite discoveries were obmutescence (willfully quiet), hypergelast (a person who won't stop laughing), natiform (shaped like buttocks) and deipnosophist (a person who is learned in the art of dining.) I added The book to my Amazon Wish List. Looks like a bargain.
OK, alert readers are noticing a difference between 1 million and 59 million. I think the answer is all the "un" words, for example. There are 400 pages of "un" words in the OED. There are lots of variations of lots of words.
OK, probably enough on that?
We recently gave up on home phone, our "land line." Why? Because we got high speed internet via satellite. By giving up the land line there was not that much cost involved.
We would go days without receiving a call on it, and the kids were increasingly frustrated with the slowness of dial-up connections; Kedra and me too.
Evidently we are not alone in this move.
A Fifth of U.S. Homes Have Cell Phones, No Landlines.
Back to the task at hand.
Donna, clearly the Spirit of God was heavily involved in Pentecost. I think the question is about how he works today.
I think the story in Acts 16 with Paul and Lydia is instructive. Paul is speaking to a small group.
One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.I think he still does this today, but it is mysterious. Why do some choose to listen/obey while others hear and turn away?
The constant in it all is proclamation. All of us need to be involved in proclaiming the message of good news with our lives and our words. "Faith comes from hearing the message of Christ."
The last couple of days have been uneventfully busy. I think that is code for: "if I told you what I've been doing you would find it boring."
I am really looking forward to summer. I am going to cut back on several activities to catch my breath and do a couple of projects that I just can't seem to get to.
It's great to have Luke home for a few days. He brought is girlfriend, Caroline, with him. They'll be here until Tuesday or Wednesday.
Luke is headed to Honduras with some engineering people from Lipscomb. They going way out into the countryside to build composting toilets. So Luke!
I visited my attendee from Sunday yesterday. [See previous post about starting a new church.] Her husband promises to come this week, so if we have him and a visitor, we will double our attendance in one week!
OK, I need to start focusing on the task for today:
* Sermon prep
* Slide show
* Life Group discussion guide
* Sunday a.m. class lecture
I hope to get all that done and maybe take Luke and Ben to Tractor Supply this evening. I haven't been there yet.
Found this; I report; you decide.
Top Ten Excuses For Avoiding Church Many people have an excuse for not attending church each week. If you were to take those excuses and apply them to other things, for example, eating, then those excuses might look like this. I am no long eating because:
10. I was forced to eat as a child.
9. People who eat all the time are hypocrites; they aren’t really hungry.
8. There are so many different kinds of food, I can’t decide what to eat.
7. I used to eat, but I got bored and stopped.
6. I only eat on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter.
5. None of my friends will eat with me.
4. I’ll start eating when I get older.
3. I don’t really have time to eat.
2. I don’t believe that eating does anybody any good. It’s just a crutch.
and the # 1 excuse for not eating...
1. Restaurants and grocery stores are only after your money.
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