MIA

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