A Picture Dying to be Taken…

Sitting on the curb, waiting for others to arrive for Bible Study, I looked at my Honda and realized, “This is a picture begging to be taken.”

2007 Honda 750 Shadow

I used Gimp to enhance this image that I shot with my cell phone (SCH-i760 — a great pda phone with a trashy camera).

Click on the image for an image suitable to use as desktop wallpaper or background.

The bike is a 2007 Honda 750 Shadow.

How to be Used by God…

I’d like my life to have some meaning. More meaning than pleasing myself and the people I love. Even pleasing the people I love is pretty selfish, if you think about it.

Years ago Christians used to speak of being “vessels” for God. The idea was that Christians carried God’s love, grace, healing, and message to the world. Vessels carry things. In this podcast, I propose a different word: faucets.

Occasionally, when one is emphasizing the power of God and his sovereignty, you can get the impression that people are not important to God at all. But that’s not the case. People are very important to God. He honors and finds pleasure in it when they serve him. No one can count the amount of work God’s had done through people like you and me. God uses faucets. And some of the vessels he’s used weren’t exactly gold-plated faucets. He doesn’t always use Herbeau fixtures.

You know what Herbeau faucets are, right? Looking online, I learned that the least expensive faucet Herbeau makes is 3001 Royale, priced at $1,349. The Herbeau 3405 Royale Deck Mounted Exposed Thermostatic Tub & Shower Faucet goes for $8,987. Their most expensive one goes for only $9,106. God isn’t looking for Herbeau faucets. The vessel conveying the blessing of God is important, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Mark Dricsoll, a fairly radical, but extremely biblical pastor in the northwest notes that God uses some vessels – some faucets – that almost anyone else would disqualify. You can read a quote from him in this post.

This sermon podcast talks about having the faith to trust God to use you to deliver his message to a needy world.

2009 Back to School Message…

I’ll never forget how ill-equipped some of the kids I went to college with were.

University of Pittsburgh Cathedral of Learning

Oh — not academically. They knew their stuff in that area. And not socially. They did fine making friends. And financially… it was like money grew on trees, for some of them.

Still, many of them were completely unprepared for what they were going to face as they went from their high schools to the university setting.

This message is designed to give students some tools to use when they are confronted by some of the less-academic (and often less-than-honorable) challenges provided by the college environment.