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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| The Servant Of The Lord... |
I installed Mac OS X, version 10.6 yesterday, just after I got home from work.
The install was flawless, especially given that my daughter blew a breaker elsewhere in the house while overloading a circuit with both the tea kettle and the vacuum cleaner. I was in the bathroom at the time as the lights went out, and my heart nearly froze in my chest (having a power failure in the middle of an OS update is not good). We shared a meal with a wonderful couple from our church, and their equally wonderful grandchild, who got along splendidly with our younger ones.
All in all the night was great, we ended the visit in prayer, our guests left, and the children were given to reading until bedtime. I on the other hand was given to making sure the "Snow Leopard" install was as tweaked as humanly possible.
After setting up one of the new screen savers, I looked into my network preferences and noticed that the update had not removed two virtual network adapters that "Parallels" had installed when I installed a demo after first moving to a Mac. That annoyed me, so I tried (once again) to delete them. and once again they were removed from my network list, but I suspected that they would be there again next time I rebooted the computer. To Test my theory, I rebooted, and sure as sunshine, there they were again. I had removed the program long ago, but these two stubs remained, and since they were sowing up as "connected" I was more than a little annoyed to have them chewing up resources. So I began a near fruitless search on how to rid myself of them. It seemed from the Parallels software forums that this was a very, very common problem, and the solution given was a very, very, useless solution, for it did not solve the problem, and many people said as much, and their observations were apparently left unanswered.
After much snooping, I found the file where the network configurations were stored, and I went in using "VI" (a unix text editor I hadn't used in a decade or more) and removed the offending entries. That worked on next boot - but for some reason my wireless connection through my Mac Mini's Airport card now had an amber colored icon to its left rather than the normative green one. We all know how traffic lights work - red means the connection is broken, green means it is fine, but amber meant that something was working, but some other thing was not. So I looked into it and discovered that my iphone could no longer talk to my Mac Mini via the Mac's wireless Airport card.
Now, previously I had a profoundly fruitless time trying to get my iPhone talking to my wireless router, given that for some reason, one day I was suddenly no longer able to see the admin page on my router. I was planning on getting a new router when I realized my Mac Mini came with an Airport Wireless adapter card built in. So I configured it instead, and managed to connect wirelessly to it via my iPhone. Which was where I had left it.
So when the changes I made to the under belly of the OS suddenly hindered my wireless set up - it was not a good thing, nor an easily rendered fix. I am quite familiar with the Windows™ paradigm, but am still a Mac newbie - and this non-standard set up was pretty much than my meagre chops could handle right out of the box, as it were. So I was spending a great deal of time using the internet to inform myself enough to affect a positive outcome.
I was successful, but not until about an hour before I was supposed to get up for work. Somewhere in my mono-focused effort the clock ticked on - and though I was yawning often, and glancing up, and even pondering in little snatches of sobriety, the consequences of my folly, yet I was convinced I could solve the problem before my wife ever had an opportunity to tell me her email wasn't working.
I went down to bed then, and made a rather foolish and sinful decision. I decided that I would call in sick today.
So instead of a mere hour's rest, I slept for a few hours, and rose this a.m. only to call in and let my supervisor know that I was not going to make it in today. But somewhere in between dragging myself out of bed, and holding the phone in my hand, the Holy Spirit reminded me that this would grieve Him. I had one of those struggles in the flesh that someone who has been in the Lord as long as I have, ought not to have any more - but at the end of it, I knew I would be going in, and not making that phone call.
Here is where the point that I began this post about comes to the fore front. As I surrendered to the will of the Lord, I began to pray, thanking the Lord for the victory, but some part of me actually felt that because this was a particularly difficult struggle, that God ought to be thankful that I chose to obey Him rather than myself in the matter. Can you believe that? Right on the heels of such grace, I had the smug wherewithal to imagine that I deserved a reward for my great act of faith, and this thought penetrated even my prayer of thanks.
How gently the truth came to me as this through lingered for a moment - I was aware of the wrongness of it at once - and immediately recalled where the Lord tells the parable of the servant who works all day in the fields, then comes into his master's home, and is made to serve him a mean and in doing so has done nothing worthy of praise - for he is a servant, and when he performs what his role requires, it is not something to praise him over, but is instead the barest minimum that is expected in a servant.
What a profound fool I am sometimes! To waste all night on some folly that could have waited, to give into the weakness of my flesh before I lay myself down to rest, planning on sin in the morning, and then, when grace finds me the next day, I puff myself up thinking that I am worthy of some kind of honour having done the very least of what is expected of me - and that not in my own strength, but in the strength of my Lord's grace which came on the wings of His conviction!
Listen: My God didn't whisper in my ear this morning audibly, but He was with me, patiently leading me out of sin, and restoring me - even the word of God says: He shall save His people from their sin. Ask me how I know I am saved, and I will tell you - I know I am saved because I see it each day - the Holy Spirit witnesses to my spirit that I am His child. Not always with words of comfort, but often with chastisement, with conviction, and then in the wake of obedience - with a profound joy in the glory of God and His righteousness that is found in me only because He has left me a Comforter - One who empowers my obedience.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise Him you creatures here below
Praise Him above ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Spirit).
Amen.Labels: Holy Spirit, obedience |
posted by Daniel @
8:14 AM
 
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| 6 Comments: |
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Oh, I can relate to this post. Thank you for the encouragement.
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Marcian - I hope you relate to the things of the Spirit, and not only the frustration of troubleshooting wireless networks... lol!
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Seriously though - even as I called in to explain my tardiness, I was candid with my supervisor about how I wanted to call in sick, but that my conscience would not suffer it - I thought of how just saying as much was itself a carnal effort to bring glory to "me". I marvel that I seem so able to note these things after the fact, and hardly ever when I am "in the moment."
Sigh. Humility begins where self ends.
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I wonder if Moses was a contemplative as you are, especially regarding what he wrote in Numbers 12:3?
Great post, as usual, bruddah.
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I have actually been comforted to learn that the Puritans long ago discovered and wrote of the very same thing I had discovered in myself, to my own grief - that even the holiest of our desires amnd actions are tainted by sin and flesh. We will ruin anything and everything beautiful. Praise God for the cross, to which we more and more brokenly cling, and for the fact that He still chooses to use broken, sinful vessels to spread His word and display His glory.
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Jibbs - I am told that the same word translated as humble was used to describe war horses in ancient times because war horses were trained to obey their master without hesitation regardless of what the command was. It didn't have the self deprecating tone we find in the English. A self deprecating man might find it difficult to call himself self deprecating, but a humble man wouldn't have any trouble calling himself humble - at least if he truly was humble in that sense.
I think Moses was probably a thoughtful man, but less sinful than I am.
Barbara - Amen.
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Oh, I can relate to this post. Thank you for the encouragement.