Money Matters, by Larry Burkett Free – Libronix

The blog over at Logos Bible Software just announced that they are giving away Money Matters free, courtesy of Bible Study Magazine.

Go here and enter the code BIBLESTUDYMAGAZINE at checkout. It is free all month!

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Why Use Gmail’s SSL?

A post over at hungy-hackers explains why you should active SSL for your Gmail account immediately.  Here is an excerpt:

The problem lies with the fact that every time you access anything on Gmail, even an image, your browser also sends your cookie to the website. This makes it possible for an attacker sniffing traffic on the network to insert an image served from http://mail.google.com and force your browser to send the cookie file, thus getting your session ID. Once this happens the attacker can log in to the account without the need of a password.

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You Might Be a Calvinist

From Tominthebox:

Atlanta, Georgia — Note: TBNN is pleased to have Jeff Foxworthy as Saturday Morning’s guest writer.

Jeff: I’m happy to fill in to today for Brother Slawson.

You know, between Lakewood and Lynchburg, there’s over 30 million people who I’d call “my people.” Many of these folks are Calvinists, they just don’t know it. I’ve designed for today a few little test questions to help you determine if there is a large likelihood that you are a Calvinist. So, if sitting in a tub full of scissors sounds more appealing to you than listening to a Sunday School class share their personal gut feelings about a Bible verse, you are a good candidate.

If you have a Martin Luther Jell-O mold, you just might be a Calvinist.

If your child’s first word was “Westminster”, you just might be a Calvinist.

Or, if you send your mother tulips on Mother’s Day,

… you might be a Calvinist.

If you still remember the 8 speakers in order from the recent T4G conference, or

If a free Bible has ever arrived in the mail to you from John McArthur, or

If you have ever purchased 100 or more copies of the same John Piper book to hand out to random people you meet,

…you just might be a Calvinist.

If you purchased an MP3 player with the sole purpose of downloading sermons, or

If you were shocked to just discover that some people download MP3 files that are not sermons, or

If you have adjusted the default passage setting at http://www.biblegateway.org from “NIV” to “ESV”

… you might be a Calvinist.

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Reformed, Emergent, Dispensational Jokes

Top Ten Reasons the Reformed Theologian did not Cross the Road

10. A woman already crossed, and he would be in sin if he followed

9. The road is not safe if it wasn’t built between 1500-1700 AD

8. He believes that “road crossing” has ceased

7. The crossing guard was only helping people cross from one side, so he suspiciously thought he was denying double pre-destination

6. Romans 9 says nothing about crossing roads

5. The “Walk” sign was gender neutral

4. The road was called Tiber Ave

3. John Wesley said that God’s prevenient grace would pave the way, but he had to take the steps himself

2. He wasn’t elected to cross before the foundation of the road

1. Piper said that God is most glorified when we are most satisfied where we are

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Blogroll Updated

The latest post on the Logos Blog asks readers to add them to their blogrolls, in exchange for some publicity, and I believe, some free books:

We’ll even do you a favor in return. Our blog post on Monday, April 28, will feature all of the bloggers who have us in their blogrolls—at least all the ones we know about. Make sure to let us know by leaving a comment on this post and sending an email to blog@logos.com with Blogroll in the subject line. (Make sure to do both in case one doesn’t make it.) What if we’re already in your blogroll? That’s okay. We’ll make sure you make the list either way.

HT: Logos

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Quarter-Life Crisis

While not an authoritative post on the subject, I was pleased to see the topic brought up in a recent Boundless article, which I’ve cleaned up a little to present below.  Hopefully it should stimulate some thought.  All too often we stop at labeling or categorizing instead of digging deeper to find find the root or cause.  And here this article gives a good perspective on what might really be going on in our (my) hearts.  Then, we must make our own personal application and resolve to do something about it:

Briefly, the quarterlife crisis hits people sometime after college and before they turn 30 when they realize that, well … life is hard!  Tim Elmore, a protégé of leadership guru John Maxwell, says “It’s 25-year-old people who are seeing counselors and therapists because they haven’t yet made their first million, haven’t yet found the perfect career or the perfect mate,” Elmore explained. “It’s self-imposed stress and pressure.”  This age group, dubbed “millennials” by demographers, are “much less attuned to reality” than previous generations, Elmore said.

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Affluenza, by Josh Harris

Josh Harris is in the middle of a blog series entitled “Affluenza” which deals with the problem of wealth in the Bible.

Here are links to the posts so far.  First.  Second.  Third.  Fourth.  Fifth.

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What is Faith?

Words used to have more meaning.  But now, it is as if people define their terms as they see fit, which is both unfortunate and dangerous.

Over at the Parchment and Pen blog, Michael Patton has another intriguing post on the usage of the word “faith.”  It begins:

What is faith? This is a very basic question that oftentimes is taken for granted because of the word’s wide usage in many different context. Because of this and because of its importance in the Christian worldview I thought that I would do what I could to briefly explain some important elements of faith. More importantly, I hope to demonstrate as briefly as I can how faith has been redefined in the Church to the point that it is in danger of relegating Christianity to irrelevancy, having equal pluralistic status with all the other major belief systems in the world.

Here is the post.

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Daily Life in a Homeless Shelter

So now I’m trying to figure out how I got here – what was the chain of events that took me from being a reasonably abnormal church going, WOW Worship buying, bible-study leading church membership guy to, well, this deeply dissatisfied person who is very much on the outside looking in. Frankly, it began shortly after I started working at the Mission, when I began to experience God in profoundly personal ways amongst the homeless, the drunks and the drug addicts. It began when I started seeing a huge disconnect between what we did on Sunday morning – being all about God – and what I did on Monday morning, which was entirely of and through and in God. Looking back on it now, I realize that once I found God I almost immediately lost my interest in church, an equation that continues to puzzle me on many levels.

Today at the Mission is a blog that records daily life in a homeless shelter.  The above quote is from a post entitled Exile on Main Street, while below is quote from the post Truth and Beauty.  You may like the blog, and too be struck by the genuineness.

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Virtual Sin and Our Desires

I’m starting to like the Christ and Pop Culture blog.  I certainly don’t agree with them, but it is good sharpening for me and a motivation to learn how to communicate some of my deeply held convictions.  In a recent post,  Alan Noble asks

Does a sin committed by a digital character constitute a sin on the part of the player?

That is a great question!  I believe it comes down to a case-by-case basis, but I’m grateful the question was posed and hope that others consider it as they choose their media and entertainment.  As in all things, what doesn’t proceed from faith is sin, so it is a question we all must be able to answer for ourselves.  Is there an objectivity that must be dealt with?  Certainly, and I’ll continue to think about it over the course of the next week.

Finally, the comments have been vigorous, and one from The Dane stood out to me:

To use a popular example here, despite not finding Rowling’s Potter books to be really of any positive moral value, I read them and thoroughly enjoyed them because they succeeded in their art. Their story was engaging and I wanted to know what would happen. If the story and characters weren’t engaging, I wouldn’t have bothered – even if the values portrayed in the series were intimately entwined with my own.

Of course I would not disagree.  And I would likewise hold my tongue when speaking to youth and young adults who exposed the same ideas.  Yet, I would ask myself, for my own accountability, why it is that I desire these things so much.  What does that reveal about my heart, and what should I do about it?

Biblically stated, the question we must ask in everything that we do is this: In this activity, how can I do it to the glory of God?  I surmise that not only are we settling in our activities for what we want to do and finding excuses for it, but we aren’t honestly answering this question.

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