This site is basically dedicated to sharing the things I’m learning in continuing my faith and trust in Christ. As well as to let friends and family keep up with what’s going on in our lives. I hope as I put my heart and thoughts into this blog you will in some way be blessed and mostly that God would be Glorified.
S
Well this year kind of fizzled out for Backpacking trips. I was hoping to do a couple of big ones this year but responsibilities and other priorities have made those impossible for this season. I am going on a couple though, I have to take Gabe out this year to try out his new pack we got him for his birthday. He’s been itching to use it since February! So I decided to take him up to Spider Meadows. I’ve heard it is absolutely beautiful and not to difficult. However I was concerned about him making it seven miles, but we went for a jog the other day for 3 miles so I think he will be able to do just fine.
We picked up the Osprey Jib 35 for him. I had looked at several kids packs and this one seemed to make the most sense. Also it was highly recommended by a fellow backpacker from Virgina. It will grow with him, has plenty of cool features and fits him very well. We’re excited for him to try it out. Hopefully we won’t need the built in rain cover!
This will be the longest trip for me milage wise so I will definitely be working on our packs weight. Try to keep them both down. I will also be trying out my homemade alcohol stove for the first time in the field, very excited about that! I’m hoping to try some freezer bag meals as well. The traditional dehydrated meals are not to bad but have a ton of sodium in them and seem to drag me down. Hope to post some updates soon!
S
I subscribe to a daily email called “Of First Importance”. One of my best friends turned me on to it earlier this year. It has been a great way to start my day by reviewing some thought from Gods Word to get my mind on the right track first thing. Yesterday morning I got one that was pretty awesome to stop and think about. Here it is:
“It doesn’t matter how complicated, how desperate, perhaps even hopeless your life has become. No matter how overwhelmed you may feel by your problems, if your trust is in Jesus Christ, you can be sure that he is praying for you now and through that prayer he will provide for you the resources to bring you relief or enable you to carry on.
The most important thing that you and I need to learn about prayer is this: first of all and ultimately, prayer is not something we do but what Jesus does for us.”
- Richard B. Gaffin, “Christ, Our High Priest in Heaven“
I have never really stopped and thought about the fact that Jesus my Lord actually prays for me. An awesome thought to behold isn’t it? Jesus the Son of God, Creator and sustainer of the universe, is praying for me… Scott Taylor. But not only for me. But for you too, if you’ve accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior as well. What peace and comfort that thought brings.
S
For the last month or two I’ve been using a web storage service called Drop-Box that gives you 2GB of on line storage. I’ve found it easy to set-up and use. basically it creates a folder on your computer that it will synchronize with an on line account folder at Drop-box. I’m currently using it for keeping my important files synchronized between 4 computers both at work and at home. I’ve helped a friend set-up his Quicken to store its data in his drop-box folder and now he can open Quicken on his laptop or desktop and always has the most recent data and it’s backed up on line! I was looking for someway to sync my files as it was getting very tedious having to make sure which version was the most recent, on which computer! Now I can work on a document on my mac book, save it, go to my desktop at home or work and its already there with the latest changes. Simple as that! It’s also great as a backup. I had a laptop drive crash on me and I didn’t have to worry about recovering my important documents because it was all in my drop-box. You can also access your drop-box from any computer connected to the Internet via their web page with your user name and password.
So if you’re interested in getting drop-box comment on this post with your email and I’ll send you a referral.
S
I’ve been into graphics and design for longer than I’ve been into computers, so over the last 15 years or so I’ve seen a lot of graphic software, some good, some bad, some not worth mentioning…, EVER! But the other day I stumbled upon one of the most easy to use, well supported and totally AWESOME vector based imaging programs I’ve ever used. The program is called Inkscape. It is so cool I can’t say much more than that. Instead check out some of the images I’ve made (below) just by viewing a few of the screencast tutorials provided. It is simple to learn, simple to use and did I mention FREE? Oh yeah! It works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Head over to their website and check it out!
S
I know I’ve been neglecting blogging for some time. Some of it has to do with time, and some just with the struggle of why blog? Is it the best use of my time? Does anyone care what is rattling around in my nugget?(please don’t answer that) But I’ve been doing a lot of studying and that has kept me away from doing much here. I question my thoughts and ideas and wonder if posting them is of benefit to anyone other than myself for just wrestling with my thoughts and ideas. I’ve struggled with just deleting this blog, but it does contain some great memories for me and my family, as well as our missions trip to Mexico and several hikes, so I decided not to do that. Today I thought I would update the blog with what God has been doing in my life.
My Portable Seminary Class is coming to a close. It’s been over a year of lots of reading and study of Theology and Doctrine(Don’t let that word scare you, it means “Teaching” which is what Christ Himself did). Every bit of it has been worth it. I’ve learned to rely on more of Gods Word (All of it) and understanding it then relying on Mans speculations. No matter what anyone tries to tell you there is absolute truth. It is contained in Gods creation and Gods Holy Word the Bible. In the class, which we call TNL, we’ve studied an overview of lots of Seminary topics:
- The Doctrine of Scripture
- Biblical Languages
- Interpreting Scripture
- The Doctrine of God the Father
- The Doctrine of God the Holy Spirit
- The Doctrine of God the Son
- The Doctrines of Humanity and Sin
- The Doctrine of Salvation
- The Doctrine of the Church
- The Doctrine of Last Things
- Background to the Old Testament
- A Survey of the Old Testament
- Between the Testaments
- Background to the New Testament
- A Survey of the New Testament
- Apologetics
- World Religions
- The Christian Church: First 500 Years
- The Church in the Middle Ages
- Reform and Revival
- Christianity as a Worldwide Phenomenon, 1750-1950
- The Church after 1950
- Introduction to Missiology
- Christian Leadership
- Christian Ethics
- Christian Education
Our last two assignments are Preparing a 30 minute sermon and lastly creating our own personal doctrinal statement. We read a book called “Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages by Haddon Robinson”. It was good information for how to organize yourself and systematically research and outline a passage to prepare to preach it. I preached on James 1:22-25 it was stretching process to study and prepare to deliver a message from God’s word. But it was well worth it. After preaching we got evaluated by our peers from the class. It was a great exercise and I look forward to doing it again. It has been helpful to watch the video of myself to see where I can improve different things in my presentation. I may post it here for fun in the future.
My Home group has just finished studying the Book of James. We used the MacArthur guide and I had a commentary by Daniel M. Doriani that is excellent in my opinion. Studying James has been awesome, some key take aways for me have been “The whole thing”! Just kidding really it is so practical and full of wisdom of living more like Christ, which is our goal as believers – Christ likeness.
I’ve just finished a book called Jesus Christ: The Prince of preachers. – Learning from the teaching ministry of Jesus. It’s written by Mike Abendroth. Two great resources he gives in the book for learning some of the deeper things of God are: http://www.bbcchurch.org/bibleinstitute.php and http://www.monergism.com/start_here.php I’ve just begun poking around them and there is an incredible amount of free information to learn about theology and doctrine. I highly recommend reading this book no matter what stage of your faith you are in.
This summer I have two big things planned. First a family trip to Camp Big Horn in Montana and second a missions trip to Guatemala. The PCT got pushed to next year hopefully. I’m trying to find a weekend or two for backpacking. Gabe is itching to try out his new backpack he got for his Birthday this year. I’m looking for a couple of new places, possibly one of the Lakes off of the PCT in the Kendall Katwalk area.
Jacki Graduated last week. It’s weird to think about her leaving home and going to college. I’ll probably post more on that later…
Thanks about it for now. God Bless
S
If you have a Wii and Mario Kart join us for some racing fun!
Buff took this with her new Digital SLR I got her for Christmas. I thought it was beautiful.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, I’ve been busy with a lot of other stuff and have not really had the time to write anything substantial so I’ve just been holding off. Our home group has finished studying Salt & Light. It was a very good study and gave us a great opportunity to think outside the box in terms of our comfort and moving toward being salt and light for Christ to all those around us. We did a couple of projects in our community which was neat, all our kids got to participate as well.
I took Nicki and Jacki out at 4am with a friend and his family on black Friday, we handed out hot chocolate to people standing in line waiting to get into the stores. We also offered them some gospel tracks, one was a Christmas quiz which was really fun and we got a good response from people on it. We also handed out a few million dollar bills to help people with their shopping. 
It was fun. Best Buy asked the team that went there to stop handing out the tracks but could go ahead and do the hot cocoa.
I’ve been busy with my Portable Seminary class, we read a book called “The Church in God’s Program.” It is one of the hardest reading books I’ve read, but if you want a good picture of the biblical call of the Church you should give it a read. Or if you prefer something a bit more readable you could read “The Masters plan for the Church.” It is a bit more readable and is pretty much in parallel with Sauy’s book.
Here is a pic of a side of me few see. It is one of my friends favorite pictures and he has it as his wall paper. Consider it a Christmas gift for you…
Merry Christmas!!
(Now you don’t have to look at the Hug post Nick!)
Friday we had the first part of our missions fest at Church. We had dinner and fellowship with 17 missionaries from around the world. It was a great time and message.
The Tornado's
Then Saturday the soccer team I’m coaching played their last game for the season. I couldn’t be more proud of them as a coach. They brought everything into that game we had been practicing so hard towards and we won. The great part is they played harder then they’ve ever played as a team. The worked together to get the job done from the first whistle to the last. The team they played had beaten us the last time we played so it was very exciting for us. Gabe scored three goals and was very excited. After the game we had a team party and handed out trophy’s to the boys.
Then Sunday we had missionaries from missions fest in the Sunday school classes sharing what God is doing all over the world. I got to hear Mike Fisher speak about what he is doing in Myanmar. Wow, it was incredible. I’m feeling ready for my next short term trip. If you’ve never gone I highly recommend it. To top the weekend off we had Rick and Carol Stark, missionaries from Brazil for dinner at our home group and they truly blessed us as well.
Man it was a great weekend, God is so good, he even carried it over into my week, I got to meet with a friend I hadn’t connected with in a while for coffee and was blessed by him. God is so good, even in the little things he is so good.
S
