It’s been a week since I’ve blogged and that’s because I’ve simply not had a moment to breathe. I think about you, my readers, a lot and I think, “I’ve got to blog. They are wondering what’s going on…what’s happening. C’mon Kevin, blog.”
Are you smiling? I hope you are! Because I know that nothing I say is really that important. Nobody is stopping the presses from rolling in their lives because I’m not blogging for a few days. But, I will say this. I’ve thought a lot about the injury to the Louisville guard who carries my first name: Kevin. Kevin Ware. And no…I’m not going to show a picture of the young man’s broken leg. We’ve all seen that enough.
The leg has been repaired.
Praise the Lord! But, I will say this. I saw the injury happen and it grabbed me. It shook me up. It literally stopped me in my tracks and I was totally stunned. I was as stunned by what I saw as anything I can remember in a long time.
Why? I think I (along with many others) were stunned because we are not used to seeing things like that on a basketball court. It would be like seeing a ballet dancer in a meat factory. It’s just odd and strange. It was a surreal moment and I made sure my kids didn’t see it. Neither Andrew nor Clara saw it. They were playing and I’m grateful. They’ve still not seen it because I believe some things must be kept from children to preserve their naivety.
Speaking of the kids. See this little girl on Katy’s lap?
Clara will be 8 years old tomorrow! Boy do I love that little girl. She is such a kind and sweet child. She’s got a heart of tenderness and compassion. I really mean that. She wrote me a note the other day. Want to hear it? Well, I’ll show it to you…misspelled words and all…
“Daddy, I am learning a lote more in my Bible this year then last year! I just wanted to tell you how much i appreciate you! You help me so much! I hope evrry time your not bizzy that you will teach me the bible! I love to here your stories! I love you daddy I love being your daughter. Love, Clara
Teary-eyed? I am. The part about not being too busy gets me. We had 650 people at church on Sunday. Yes, I know it was Easter. But we are averaging 511 people. That’s up from 396 this time last year. We’ve added 68 people to the church since our church year began on October 1st. We’ve baptized 17 with five more to baptize this Sunday. We had two professions of faith after the second service last week. Can you see why I’ve not had much time to blog? 🙂
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m as happy as a pig in slop. I’m so blessed to be an Elder/Pastor in such a wonderful church. The people at Mt. Pleasant are so wonderful and I’m honored to serve the Lord with them. Notice I said, “serve the Lord with them.” There is no “professional” clergy versus laity in Scripture. I’ve simply acknowledged the desire to lead and shepherd the church and the church saw this and recognized me as a leader/shepherd (or what we call a “pastor”).
So, the church is growing and I’m “bizzy” as Clara says. So I’ve got to make sure that I don’t get “Buried Under Satan’s Yoke.” See those capital letters: B…U…S…Y? That spells: BUSY. But, I’ll tell you the honest truth. It is busy right now. I’m getting up at 3:15 in the morning to go and cook barbecue chicken at the church, so we can raise money for our work in Mexico. We are “raising the roof” in Mexico. This is the church in Progreso, Mexico that we’ll be sending a team down one week from Saturday to pour the roof.
We are cooking 800 halves and it’s going to be cold and wet! That makes for slow burning charcoal. So, that’s why we have to start cooking at 4 am. So it will be a bright and early morning for us. No…check that. It will be a dark and early morning for us. 🙂
Saturday, Pam and I are hosting a marriage conference at the church from 3 pm to 8 pm. We have 55 couples who’ve bought tickets. The cost? $10 per couple. How’s that for a good deal? And that includes a catered meal!
Can I tell you that I’m blessed with a wonderful wife? MPBC has two for the price of one. I actually had a man say to me the other day. “Hey, if money is tight for you…tell Pam to get a job.” I said, “She’s got a job. She’s helping me!” I told this gentleman, “She does more counseling than anyone in the church besides me. She holds the fort down so I can look after 500+ people.” Truth is, without Pam I couldn’t do what I do. If she had a “job” (that’s so hilarious for me to type…because she has a job of being a wife, mom, homeschool teacher and helper to me with a huge church), I would have to resign, because I couldn’t get it all done. Some people are so misguided. But, we love them anyway! Turn the other cheek and walk the second mile.
While I’m at it. A church our size has an average of 5-6 full-time pastors. We have two! That’s it. So, I think the church has a pretty good deal going. Don’t you? Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Sometimes I think we all feel like we just can’t do enough.
Well, I think I’ll shut down this little diatribe with some thoughts about my buddy Bill O’Reilly. I like Bill. Do you know him?
I watch him several times during the week at 11 pm as I’m getting ready for bed. I read from CNN’s website and I listen to NPR (National Public Radio) to get the “liberal slant” on things and I listen to O’Reilly to get the “conservative slant” on things. Well, O’Reilly really disappointed me the other night. Not that at it matters, really. But, I was disappointed in him because he’s normally very “Judeo-Christian” in his viewpoints. Well, he sure isn’t when it comes to using the Bible to make a point about gay marriage.
I think it’s worth reading or I wouldn’t post the entire article here. But, take a look at what he said and then ask yourself, “Should Christians stop using the Bible to defend their faith?” I’ll go ahead and tell you my answer. NO! The only truth that we have that is built on the “rock” is the Word of God…the Scriptures. Everything else is “of man” and is shifting sand.
Take a look…
Bryan Fischer: Hey, Bill, we’ll keep thumping our Bibles, just like the Founders
Posted by Tasha Easterling – April 03, 2013 Follow Bryan on Twitter: @bryanjfischer
Bill O’Reilly recently took it upon himself to insult everyone in America who has reverence for the Bible as the word of God. He ludicrously claimed that supporters of natural marriage haven’t “been able to do anything but thump the Bible” in making their case.
Now God clearly defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman in Genesis 2, and Jesus reaffirmed God’s definition verbatim in Matthew 19, which means, of course, that man-woman marriage is as much a part of the gospel itself as heaven and hell. What God and Jesus Christ have defined, man must not redefine.
But O’Reilly obviously hasn’t been paying attention, since supporters of natural marriage have not only cited Scripture but the best in social research, history and legal thinking to make the case that marriage ought to be defined exclusively as a one-man-one-woman institution. So O’Reilly is betraying his own blinding ignorance here while at the same time mocking the very Americans he hopes will watch his program.
Well, Mr. O’Reilly, we are going to go right on clinging to our Bibles and our religion whether gasbags in the media approve or not.
In his self-infatuated preening, O’Reilly is apparently oblivious to the stubborn historical fact that the Bible was the primary source of the wisdom the Founders used to draft the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
When they wanted to talk about civil rights, they didn’t cite social research or history or legal precedence. They thumped their Bibles, appealing to the “Creator” of Genesis 1 as the source of every fundamental right human beings possess.
The Founders thumped their Bibles some more by shamelessly appealing to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” echoing scriptural teaching from Romans 1 and 2.
They pounded their theology even harder in the final paragraph of the July 4, 1776 document – the legal document on which the United States is founded – by “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World.” And they had the audacity to declare that the declaration was not, actually, in fact, a “Declaration of Independence” but, at a profound level, a “Declaration of Dependence” when they boldly affirmed their “firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence.”
In other words, they couldn’t stop talking theology in the very document that established the United States as one of the sovereign “Powers of the Earth.”
And things only get worse for O’Reilly when the books, monographs and pamphlets produced by the 55 men who drafted our Constitution are studied, as they were by professors Donald S. Lutz and Charles S. Hyneman. Their findings were published in 1984 in the “American Political Science Review.”
They examined over 15,000 items with explicitly political content, examining them for citations of external, authoritative sources. In other words, they were seeking to identify which sources the Founders most often cited to support or defend their political opinions. They found 3,154 direct quotes from other sources.
In what may come as an aneurysm-inducing shock to Mr. O’Reilly’s system, the Bible was far and away the most frequently cited source. In fact, an astonishing 34% of all references to other sources were from the Bible. Montesquieu was a distant, distant second with 8.3% of all citations, while Sir William Blackstone, the greatest legal mind of the 18th century, garnered just 7.9%. And poor John Locke, the most influential political philosopher of his day, was cited a paltry 2.9% of the time.
When indirect Bible citations are included, the percentage of scriptural citations is much higher than 34%. And even worse for Mr. Bill, the bulk of the thinkers cited by the Founders outside the Bible, according to historian John Eidsmoe in his book, “Christianity and the Constitution,” “were not deists and philosophes, but conservative legal and political thinkers who often were also Christians.”
Mr. O’Reilly, we stand in rock-solid agreement with President Andrew Jackson, who in one conversation pointed to a Bible and said, “That book, Sir, is the rock upon which our republic rests.”
So Bill, go right ahead and keep pounding your chest. We’ll go right ahead and keep thumping our Bibles. Just like the Founders.
I couldn’t have said it better myself…and I probably would have…but I’m going to go get “bizzy” playing with my kids!
