Day 1 of Our Captivity...

I am babysitting for the first time in my life EVER! 

Or rather we are- but Matt gets to go to work while I am held captive by my niece.  She is 6 years old and surely the cutest girl I have ever seen.  Today after taking showers and having uncle Matt comb out her hair we went out on a little adventure.  We went shopping at the thrift store, then to see Tangled at the cheap theater, and then on the walk home we stopped at the Mexican bakery and got some treats.  Once home we played some Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo, baked a green cake  for St. Patrick's Day, and then got dinner ready.  Jamie and Steven joined us for Irish bangers and green mash for the holiday.  Here is a picture of Liberty with her cake.  We will have her here with us for 3 more days or as Liberty would say "3 more sleeps!"

Look who was waiting for Liberty to arrive!

MY Contribution to Salvation

"The only thing that I contribute to my own salvation is the sin that makes it necessary."
                                         - Archbishop William Temple

The Rapture: History & Influence in America

The Rapture: History and Influence in America from Derrick Sims on Vimeo.

We Missed Painting...

We spent so much time painting while we were in Tucson we missed it... or to be more honest I missed it... or rather I just miss bright Mexican colors.  So we recently bought a cheap ($8!) shelf at a local thrift store for our TV and painted it to remind us of warmer desert days.  Here is how it turned out...

Before...

...After

Recent Concerts

I love love love music and lately I was able to attend two different concerts of artists I really enjoy.  They are both in the top 15 most beloved artists of my heart. The first one is Sara Groves who is a Christian singer songwriter.  She sings my favorite song of all called time "When the Saints."  She recently performed at a women's conference up here so me and my sister Regan, who introduced me to her music years ago, went.  Groves is an extremely talented songwriter who has a beautifully clear and crisp voice, the kind of voice that pours out easily as if it takes no effort for her to sing at all!  She unfortunately didn't sing my favorite song during this concert but she did sing a song that went strait to my heart about marriage.  Here is a video of her explaining it and singing it on a radio station.

The second concert was of a singer songwriter by the name of Griffin House.  Matt introduced me to him a few years ago.  He plays acoustic guitar (my favorite) and is also a very good songwriter.  Matt and I saw him last night at a really neat venue in Dinkytown at the U of M called the Varsity Theater.  This place was really cool inside and very intimate.  We sat about 15 feet back from the stage at a round table.  I wish concerts were always like this!  Anyway,  so you can get a taste here is a video of Griffin House playing one of his more fun songs, written about his personal history.

Griffin House has played in Tucson before but I would be surprised to ever be able to see Sara Groves in concert there so living in Minnesota has some benefits!

A Serious Sharpening...

This is one of the best sermons I have ever heard and because of it I may have entered the fold of covenant theology- which I have only flirted with in the past.  Ryan and Ben and Phil will be so proud of me...

"The Law, the Prophets and the Last Days" by Sinclair Ferguson

This sermon is from the study I am doing on eschatology- the fruit of which may not be a particular view of the millennium after all but may instead be  a serious sharpening or even a kind of  paradigm shift in my understanding of the Bible as a whole and God's plan of redemption.   I hope you will take the time to listen to this amazing sermon and at the end stand up in triumphalistic worship of Christ and God the Father, who is all in all.

For further information on covenant theology versus dispensationalism check out this helpful article by Ligon Duncan. Dispensationalism: A Reformed Evaluation

The Truth about the Sharptooth... and his Sidekick

This video is to stop up the mouths of all you Sharptooth mockers! He is supposed to be big, he is very strong (the vet can't even hold him down!), and he is the friendliest, fluffiest, most beautiful cat the Lord has created!



And don't forget about the Sharptooth's faithul Sidekick, Indi...

40!

My sister Jamie is 40!

I can't believe it!

Happy Birthday.  I love you, Sis!

The Millenial Maze

I have been raised in the faith by the best Bible teacher in the world, John MacArthur,who has taught me to love truth, to love doctrine, to have the highest view of Scripture (which is all sufficient), to understand the biblical teachings of God's sovereign grace and many, many more things.  One thing he has also taught me is what can be called a dispensational premillenial view of eschatology.  As a new Christian I assumed all believers understood end times this way and was shocked when I heard another trusted and beloved Bible teacher, R.C. Sproul, criticize the rapture.  After this I thought more about the rapture and became suspicious of it myself due to the vagueness of the verses used to defend it.  For many years now my questions on eschatology have multiplied and I have wanted to study it more in depth.  I decided last week now was the time to start that study.

I am trying to give all the eschatological views an equal hearing.  This is hard on one hand because I am used to a form of premillenialism so this one sounds most familiar and normal to me.  But then on the other hand I know excellent Bible teachers in each camp so if Sproul claims that the Bible teaches  postmillenialism and Sinclair Ferguson teaches amillenialism and Francis Schaeffer holds to historic premillenialism  and John MacArthur to dispensational premillenialism how can I fail to look into these things?  And the scarier question is how do I expect to be able to figure this out if the greatest minds cannot agree?  Well, I am looking into it anyway because I long to know and so I must try.

Here are some of the resources I have been using so far:

Finding Hope in the Millenial Maze Conference (14 audio messages)
Wayne Grudem's "Biblical Doctrine" textbook
John MacArthur Study Bible
R.C. Sproul Reformation Study Bible
Eschatology comparison chart

There is a good chance I may end up a "pan-millenialist" as they say (it will all pan out in the end!) at the end of this study but I must try and make sense of it biblically.  I will let you know how it goes...

But God Remembered...

Minnesota was dumped on with snow right before we moved here last month with one of their snowiest months on record.  I really wanted Matt to experience a good snow- even a blizzard before the winter was over.  I hoped it would come on a weekend so we could stay in and and watch it out the window, all snuggled up with hot cocoa.  A romantic snow-in so to say.  Last week we had some really nice days, with temps in the 50's even, so I was ready for spring.  But God remembered that I had wanted a blizzard...

Today my family planned to celebrate my sister Jamie's 40th birthday.  The snow started this morning while we were in church around 10 and by the time we left for Regan's house in the afternoon it had been snowing a few hours and the roads were a disaster.  We passed many cars in the ditch along the freeway on the way there and thanked God we were not one of them.  We had a wonderful time at Regan's with the family, all the while the beautiful snow was falling.   By the time we left  about a foot of snow had fallen.  We wondered if we were going to make it home the 16 miles we had to drive.  We didn't know how the Element would handle it.  We treaded slowly home.  The freeway had been plowed but all the other roads we drove on were not.  We saw many cars in the ditch again.  Amazingly we were able to make it down our road and into our driveway.  About three quarters of the way up our driveway Matt proudly proclaimed, "the Element will not be mocked!" And right then we got stuck in our driveway, about 15 feet away from being inside our garage!  We had to get out and shovel the remainder of the driveway so we could get our car in the garage.  And the snow is still falling...

Visiting... yes, that's right!

We have been enjoying some unseasonably warm days in Minnesota this week, temps in the 40's and 50's which, in February, is rare to say the least.  Well, we were feeling so good yesterday we decided to go out and buy a grill so we could enjoy the warm winter air while having a cigar and grilling out.  We picked up a basic little charcoal grill at Home Depot and on the way home we were rocking out in the car to some favorite Mexican music (see video below for song).  It was so warm we had to roll the windows down.  Then I leaned over to Matt and said, "What are we doing here? We belong in the desert!"  He looked at me and without missing a beat he said, "Visiting!"  GOOD ANSWER, HONEY!

MacLaurin Institute Lectures

One thing Matt and I consider exciting and fun about living in Minnesota is that we are living near a major metropolitan area.  We live in the suburbs of St. Paul and are just a hop away from downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis.  The Twin Cities, due to their sheer size, offer many things to do that Tucson does not- like major sporting events and concerts to name just a few.  We haven't gone to any performances yet but we did go down to the University of Minnesota over the weekend to hear some lectures and then over to Dinkytown for lunch.  For those of you in Tucson, Dinkytown is like University Blvd, with shops and restaurants and college students.  The University of Minnesota is a beautiful campus and I look forward to exploring it more this summer.  

The lectures we went to were put on by the MacLaurin Institute.  This is a Christian organization which endeavors to bridge the church and University.  They have different events all year round like lectures from visiting Christian scholars.  This weekend a professor of the history of science from Messiah College in Pennsylvania was the speaker.  He gave three lectures.  The first one was on the life of Christian Chemist Robert Boyle.  The second lecture was on the supposed warfare between science and religion.  The third lecture was on the life of Galileo.  All three were very interesting.  I look forward to going to more of MacLaurin's events.

Desiring God Pastor's Conference & Booty

My sisters and friend Cbass serve as often as they can at the Desiring God conferences put on by John Piper here in the Twin Cities a few times a year. Now that I live here I am able to join in the fun too. Last night my sisters, Cbass, and I welcomed the incoming pastors for this year's conference on, "the powerful l ife of the praying pastor." About 1700 Men came from all over the country and even a few foreign countries. It was such a blessing to welcome them and see their smiling faces, knowing they were here to be refreshed and encouraged in the word so they can continue in their personal growth and then go home to feed their flocks! We got to give them a bag of goodies (books!) which the volunteers also receive. Here is a picture of what the goodie bag contained plus the new Piper book I bought called "Think: the Life of the Mind and the Love of God." This conference housed an amazing bookstore with reduced prices and let me tell you I had to run through it as it was a dangerous place to be for me! If we are still living here next February I am hoping to house our Pastor from Tucson who would like to come to this conference.  You can listen to and live stream the conference at Desiring God.

Conference Draws Nigh!

I CAN'T WAIT!!!

Ligonier Ministries 2011 National Conference (March 24-26 in Orlando) from Ligonier on Vimeo.

A Post From the Road

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Moving is said to be one of the 3 most stressful things in life. Well, I don't think I'd go that far but it definitely is stressful. With all the packing, spades, and goodbyes I didn't get a chance to blog my last week in Tucson. Suffice it to say it was busy and we were very sad to leave our most favorite city, our church, our friends and Matt's side of the family. We left Tucson yesterday morning hitting the road around 8 AM. Matt and his Dad led the way in the moving truck while I followed close behind in the Element with the cats. We had taken out the two back seats and built a cat wonderland in the back by erecting a plastic fence behind the the two front seats which we secured with plastic ties and duct tape. We then filled the back with blankets and pillows and of course the cat loo so the cats could travel in comfort. Indi yowled non-stop for the first 150 miles, sometimes convincing Sharptooth to do rounds with her. She finally settled down enough to just throw a few yowls here and there the rest of the way. The first day we traveled 720 miles, stopping to make camp in Clayton, NM which is near the border with Oklahoma. New Mexico is full of horses, chiles, kokapellis, and high desert landscape with the beautiful Santa Fe area being the highlight. Today we got back on the road around 8 again, driving through a bit of the panhandle of Oklahoma, then across Kansas (cows, silos, and oil rigs), and up into Kansas City, Missouri where we are staying tonight. Today's car ride, 540 miles,  was much quieter with Indi just giving me reminder yowls every once in a while lest I forget she was in the backseat. Tomorrow's journey will take us about 440 miles, through Iowa and then up into Minnesota -where the high there tomorrow is 14. The high in Tucson when we left yesterday was 70. I tried to encourage Matt by telling him he was going to experience living in 4 seasons for real now. He wasn't impressed. I guess I'll have to take him walking on a frozen lake...

Bathroom Remodel

Matt and I did a quick remodel on our master bathroom a few weeks ago.  This bathroom had the same hideous orange laminate counter tops our kitchen had before we remodeled it.  As you can tell from the before and after pics the bathroom turned out pretty darn good.  Good job, honey!

Going Away Party :(

Last night we had a going away party at our house.  It was a good time as most of our amigos were able to come.  Here are a few pics from the get together.

Indi's Southwest Cat Castle

Matt designed and constructed this cat castle a few years ago for our cats. This is the third time it has been re-carpeted. He could not have bestowed it on a more appreciative cat than Indi as she plays on it constantly. This time the re-carpeting brought with it some vigas sticking out of the house. This is to remind the purrs where they come from- Tucson, Arizona!

Madison = Misdirection!

Ok, I am up in Minnesota visiting my family and the cat is finally out of the bag!  What a hard secret it was to keep!  In case there are any of you out there who do not yet know- Matt, though he was invited for an interview by University of Wisconsin at Madison, he did not actually take a job there.  We just told my family that to throw them off the trail.  The truth of the matter is that Matt was offered a job in Minneapolis which he has accepted.  I have had a lot of fun the last few days surprising my family with the good news.  They are very excited as are we!  ... Go Vikes!

Ryanhood Christmas Gig

Last night Matt and I got to go see our favorite Tucson band, Ryanhood.  I stumbled across this band on Noisetrade.com last spring and downloaded their album because I saw that they were from Tucson.  I immediately loved them.  When Matt and I moved back to Tucson late this summer we found out Ryanhood was playing Sunday nights at a local winebar just down the road from us so we went to see them a number of times.  The bummer thing was they weren't playing together but were alternating Sundays and playing with other local artists.  They told us they were taking a break for the rest of the year because of being on tour for so long.  We thought we wouldn't get to see them before we moved away but then they announced a Christmas gig here in Tucson.  We saw them last night at the Rialto Theater.  We almost didn't make it but were so glad we did once they started playing.  They are an extremely talented guitar duo and we were very blessed by their awesome and fun performance last night.  Here is a video so you can check out their style.

Go Badgers!

Ok, this may be a little bit premature but I am so excited I can't contain it!  As you my readers are aware Matt was off interviewing this week in Reno, NV and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  Yesterday afternoon he was officially offered a job by both places.  Both jobs are good but due to the fact that Madison is just a hop, skip and a jump away from my family he has decided to accept the job in Madison.  The official paperwork is due to be sent to him Monday so you can bet we will be celebrating that night!  My sister is already calling us cheese heads and I have already called her a swampie.  These are the respective  terms of endearment between the rival states of Wisconsin and Minnesota.  Let the rivalry begin- go Packers! Go Brewers!  And most of all go Badgers!!!

The Consequences of Non-Expository Preaching

Recently I listened to a great two part series by John MacArthur on the consequences of non-expository preaching.  In this series he unfolds these fifteen consequences

Failure to preach expositionally...

1.Usurps the authority of God over the mind and soul of the hearer.
2. Usurps the Lordship of Christ over His church.
3. Hinders the work of the Holy Spirit.
4. Manifests a lack of submission to Scripture.
5. Severs the preacher personally from the sanctifying grace of Scripture.
6. Removes spiritual depth and transcendence from the souls of the people, crippling worship.
7. Prevents the preacher for truly speaking fro Christ whom he serves.
8. Depreciates by example the spiritual duty and benefit of studying the Scripture.
9. Breeds a congregation that is weak and indifferent to the glory of God.
10. Robs people of their only true source of help.
11. Creates a destructive disconnect between sound doctrine and life.
12. Dishonors God by omitting these truths that trouble, offend, and terrify sinners.
13. Disconnects people from the legacy of the great theologians of the past.
14. Removes protection from error that is deadly to the church.
15. Deceives people that they have heard from God when they haven't.

I highly recommend this series.  You can read the text or download the audio here:  Part 1  Part 2

Greetings from Lake Tahoe

Matt just sent me this picture from his time interviewing in Reno.  As you can see they are trying to butter him up by taking him to the beautiful Lake Tahoe.  Looks cold, but would be considered a heatwave compared to the weather in the Midwest right now!

Advent Preaching Series- Take a Listen!

The Pastors at my church are currently preaching an Advent series for Advent season.  Last week our Associate Pastor, Luke, preached an awesome sermon on Isaiah 49 called Prophecy of a Savior.  Any pastor who can clearly explain Isaiah so that you can understand it is easily  worth his weight in gold!  The week before that our Senior Pastor, Phil, also preached a very good sermon to kick off the Advent series called Covenant Promises of a Savior.  These are both free for download.  I encourage you to take a listen!

On top of these great sermons there is also a fantastic Sunday school class that has just started this weekend called The Dirty Dozen.  This class will be 12 weeks of 12 different theologians from church history.  The first class yesterday was on Athanasius and the Arian controversy of his time.  I will post the link as soon as it comes up online.

Interview Time!

Here is what it has looked like around my house lately with Matt having a few phone interviews for jobs.  This week he is out on in person interviews in Reno, Nevada and Madison, Wisconsin.  I am especially excited about Madison as it is only  about 4-5 hours away from my family in Minnesota.  I only get to see them about once or twice a year so if we lived this close I would get to see them much more often.  We don't know how many candidates are being interviewed but hopefully we will know something by the end of this week!

Thanksgiving for Forgiveness

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Matt and I had our coffee around the fire bowl this crisp and wintery Tucson morning and spent a little time talking about what we are most thankful for this year.  The top of the list this year and every year has to be forgiveness from God in Christ.  I recently listened to an awesome study on forgiveness from my favorite Bible teacher John MacArthur.  He taught this four part study out of the book of Philemon.  It was amazing.  As he says in the beginning of the study "we are never more like God than when we forgive."  I highly recommend this study to you.  It can be found here free for download on the Grace To You website.

Thanks be to God who demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Feline Fun in the Desert

We take our cats outside every so often for supervised visits with nature.  They absolutely love it but they cannot go out without us or they would quickly become coyote food or road kill.  Here are some pics from today's field trip into the east patio where they learned all about cactus...

Kitchen Gone Mexican

Matt and I have been making the most of our time here in Tucson while he looks for a job. Each day we get up early, have our coffee and then get to work on the house. We have made many improvements in these last couple of months with kitchen remodeling, painting, yard work, and a host of other odds and ends around the house. Here are a few pics of the kitchen so you can see how it turned out. We did this all ourselves with Matt's mom helping us on the tile work.

                                                                 BEFORE...

                                                                      AFTER...

We were inspired by a Mexican kitchen we saw at a store here in Tucson called Rustica which had copper cabinet inserts and was very colorful. Due to the cost-prohibitive nature of these special kind of cabinets we thought we'd try making inserts ourselves. We searched high and low for tin but in the end had to use aluminum. We chose a different southwest design for each cabinet pair and Matt hammered them out using an awl. We also used a bit of paint to give them an aged look and mounted them to our existing outdated cabinets giving them a whole new look. We then removed the orange laminate counter tops and constructed the countertops and backsplash using Mexican talavera tile. Craigslist made it possible for us to upgrade our appliances and then we replaced the sink and lights and painted. It all turned out muy bien! The only thing missing now is the dishwasher and saltillo tile on the floor. Someday...

The Serpent at the Tucson Zoo?

A few weekends ago we went to the Tucson Zoo where I saw the snake from Genesis chapter 3. YIKES!!!

  









¹Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

 ² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

 ⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. -Genesis 3:1-7

An Amercian Family Photo

Matt and his brother thought it would be fun to dress like rednecks and take pictures with their guns one day.  Once we started taking pics we were laughing and having so much fun we had to take one with not just the brothers but with  the whole family.  I thought my friends in Europe would especially appreciate  the pics given their feelings regarding firearms.  What can I say but viva la second amendment!