So I know some of you will already be all over this, and I also know that some of you won’t be able to take advantage of this offer. BUT if you haven’t heard this, and CAN use it, this is awesome!!
The Holiness of God
And . . . yeah . . . I already have the print version of this book and have read maybe halfway through or so . . . but I definitely picked this version up. Who can bypass a free book??
If you don’t have a Kindle, you can also download one of the free Kindle Apps
Have fun!! 
Francis Chan’s latest book Erasing Hell
Erasing Hell starts off with a broad overview of popular beliefs about Hell and then moves on to the Jewish views of hell that would have been contemporary with the time of Christ. It was interesting to find out some of the things that I had heard or thought about hell were inventions carried over from the Middle Ages, no doubt those views were NOT something I had heard from my parents or my church who have been very staunch providers of a biblical worldview.
Anyway, to get back on track. Chan works through a number of issues and brings it all home in the last chapter by broadening the question to be more than just about Hell. After he shows the various views of hell, and the passages of Scripture that support or debunk them, he moves on to challenge the reader to look at the rest of scripture and see what other areas there are where we believe things just because we don’t want to necessarily admit the simple truths of Scripture.
All in all I don’t know that this is a must-read for most of you, but it was interesting.
So, I’ve been busy.
A month ago or so, Todd Bolen posted a plea for help on his blog. He was updating his Bibleplaces.com Pictorial Library of Bible Lands and needed to send out some of the work so he could finish everything else he was working on. I emailed him and the next thing I knew I was up to my eyeballs in photos. He sent me a couple of hundred images for various volumes of the Library and after I had processed them all, he asked if I wanted another, much larger, project. I told him I would be willing and then he sent me 9500+ images to crop for a new collection.
I was busy downloading for a couple of days and then spent days cropping photos. I am excited to say that I received a copy of the finished volume in the mail this week and it looks really good. Todd has put together a collection of photos of archaeological artifacts from all over the Mediterranean region and organized them by region and time period and made a very cool set out of them.
In the meantime I have become very proficient in Lightroom and have started looking for freelance work to add to my experience. So if anyone has any projects that I can pick up from them, I would love to talk to you about them. At this point I am looking for photo editing and graphic design sorts of work, with a little web design thrown in for good measure.
On another note I recently added an email subscription page to the site. I am organizing another project that I can hopefully release the details of after the beginning of the year. At this point I intend to use the email list to keep those interested parties updated on the progress of that project once we get started. I know this is vague, but it’ll be really cool, trust me. 
Changing directions once again, Jennica and I have been married for a little over four months now and it is pretty much the best thing EVER! I have been very blessed to have married her and I fear that she has received the short end of the deal by marrying me. :p
Til next time,
In Matthew 16:18 we have the first use of the word ‘Church’ in the context of a discussion between Jesus Christ and the twelve. Jesus asks them who the people say that He is, and after various answers Christ asks them who THEY thought he was. Peter pipes up and says that he is “”You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” in verse 16. Jesus responds that it is upon this truth that He will build His church. As the rest of the gospel unfolds we see more and more references to this concept of “church”. A few chapters later Jesus gives us a lecture on how to keep order in the church (Matt 18) and then after Christ is resurrected, we see the beginning of the church as we have come to see it.
The whole concept of ‘church’ comes from the Greek root words which mean “called out” or “called forth”.¹ As I have thought about this for the last week or so, I find it very interesting that this is the same idea (different language) that God uses when he calls Abram out of the land of Ur in Genesis 12 and says that He “will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” Later in the Pentateuch as the nation of Israel as taking possession of the Land of Canaan they are called to be different then the nations that they are dispossessing.
Anyway, that’s a side note. What I am getting at here is that we as Christians are not the first ones to be called out from the nations to be dedicated to God. Which seems to offer a point to the dispensationalists, but that is an argument for some other time. We are interested here to see that God has chosen us very directly to belong to Him and in so doing to live our lives in sharp contrast to the world that we live in. The nation of Israel did almost everything differently then the nations around them. They didn’t eat certain kinds of meat, they didn’t dress like everyone else, they didn’t worship as everyone else did. They were different, and very noticeably so.
I hope by this point you are beginning to see how different those who are called out by God are supposed to be. We are called to not fit in, to be seen as an anomaly, or unusual. Not in the sense that we cannot fit into our enviroment, but that in how we live, we are not like the world around us.
The key to this was highlighted to me recently by Pastor Todd in a sermon as we are working through a series Sunday mornings titled “Life Together”. He mentions that the church should be known for our sacrifice. Romans 12 starts right off by saying that we are to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” We are to present ourselves as sacrifices, giving up our own will and desires to the will of God. Not so easy in practice as it is to write. But because God commands us to live that way, it IS possible.
References:
1.) Blue Letter Bible. “Dictionary and Word Search for ‘Church’ in the ESV”. Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2011. 16 Jan 2011. <http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/translationResults.cfm?Criteria=Church&t=ESV >
So I sat down this morning and decided to dust off the old keyboard and have another go at writing something . . . and then I ran across this post and thought better of writing anything new, just click through and read a challenging post.
I know I dont usually do things like this, but I wanted to highlight the process that one of my friends and his family is going through right now. They are in the middle of the process to adopt three orphans from Rwanda. You can read their story by clicking the crayons below. Thanks!!
