Erin and I met Eric James' dad on Sunday at Christ the King! He is awesome - we had a good mini talk and I need to e-mail him back so Erin and I can head over and meet Eric's family... they actually live pretty close to us....
Erin and I have really dug the music so far at Christ the King - this Sunday we sang: Amazing Grace, Let us Love and Sing and Wonder, Be Thou My Vision, and Jesus I come to Thee.
On an unrelated note I wanted to give a shout out to John Harty: http://thebearded.blogspot.com/ welcome to the blogosphere....
and also to my sister Amy - thanks for stepping out into the new frontier of blog to comment!
Work has been awesome for me.... I really am liking my job so far, and I get to listen to www.sermonaudio.com pretty much all day... I've been listening to a lot of O. Palmer Robertson lately and I really dig his voice..... I also listened to some more Keller and Piper for good measure. I'm almost finished with Life Together and I wanted to start blogging about how I've been effected by it...
So this is from the end of the book, but it really hit me hard:
From Ch.4: Ministry in the section: The Ministry of Listening
"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them... Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking... But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words... and it is certain that here too our attitude toward our brother only reflects our relationship to God."
As I sit on a train crowded full of a small portion of the couple million residents of Houston these words really hit home with me. As Erin and I were moving here, I told her that one thing I really wanted to work on was pride.... to fight the urge to be 'right' in conversations as though to exert some perceived authority over another.... I'm learning more and more that I am a poor listener to the disservice of the community that God entrusted me with over the past three years, and I hope that I'm growing in grace to be quiet in the presence of the Lord and listen to His Word, to be attentive to the Spirit, and to really long for the heart and burden of my brothers and sisters...... perhaps a quiet mouth in my case will bring about a quiet soul.
All for now.
-jake
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3 comments:
Are the one pure thing,
That I've always prayed for.
Scales are falling from my eyes,
I must have been so blind before.
I would lie down on the street,
To keep the dust off of your feet,
I would kneel each time I kissed you,
Anything Jake and erin I miss you.
Ugly Day the sun is shining,
Every cloud's got a silver lining.
Ugly day the skies are blue,
Now every day is ugly without you.
<3
-Joel
As long as you're hard at 'work' at your station all day, may as well open up a whole can of edification: http://www.rctr.org/ap5.htm, just in case you hadn't already discovered that one.
Work on!
Joel - when are you back from that mythical land known as "canada".
Sarah, you should indulge in Bonhoeffer - have you read his little book on Psalms?
C-Lint, I wet myself with glee upon seeing this website, and I will drink deeply of it
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