Last night we had a family wrestling night at home. Tyler came to his mommy’s defense! We managed to catch this part on video. Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Mark Dever has a unique look and sound, or so I thought. (Does anyone else find it odd that a boy from Kentucky has a British/East Coast accent?) I was listening to a 60 Minutes piece by Scott Pelley and it hit me, that is Mark Dever talking! He even looks like him. Listen for yourself, Mark & Scott.

This morning we got one of Lauren’s ad lib songs, the Puppy Song:

I love you little Puppy, I know you love me

I love you little Puppy, I know you want to hear my song

I love you little Puppy, I know you all want my attention

You have a perfect little will, you want to 0-bey

I love you little Puppy…

I simply want to highlight two verses, 1 and 7.

“Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments.” Can that be said of you? Many will speak of how they delight in the LORD, but do you also delight in his commandments? This verse implies that the commandments of God are directly attached to the person of God, because the one who is in a relationship with God, or fears God, is the same as the one who delights in his commandments. Therefore it can be said, you cannot love one and not the other.

“He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm trusting in the LORD.” If we trust in the LORD, the sovereign one, why should we be afraid of any news? This is much easier to talk about than to live out, but it is to be the goal of any godly man or woman. We are to stand firm, not to be shaken, and the only way to be firm to to be fixed, rooted, in the LORD for He does not change.

It occurred to me yesterday that doctrine is not the real divider in churches any more. For example, even conservatives, reformed conservatives, are beginning to say that what you believe on the doctrine of baptism is not essential to church membership. This would make sense with a real emphasis on community churches in recent years and the removal of any doctrinal belief from a church’s name, and in light of the overall de-emphasis of the importance of doctrine. There has been a fight to reclaim certain doctrines within the church, but I fear the fight still sees them as less important than what the truly are. The divider now appears to be the emphasis of a church. Emphasis meaning things like, being relevant to the culture, traditional or contemporary worship, social needs, being seeker sensitive, etc.. This appears to dispel the idea that doctrine alone divides, but rather it is pride in the sinful nature that divides. But now instead of something substantial and essential dividing we are allowing preferences to divide and create new “Denominational” lines.

For those of you who grew up in the 80’s, no this is not a Little Caesars plug.  Although, I could really go for some of their crazy bread right now.  Some good friends of ours told us about a special at Pizza Hut on Broadway in Anderson (sorry to any who read from outside of A-Town), 99 cent Personal Pan Pizzas for the month of November.  So, if you don’t feel like cooking, or need a cheap lunch stop in and take advantage.

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.

These are statistics from sites on hunger in our world and age. I read somewhere else 16,000 children will die each day because of causes related to lack of food. My wife and I both were taken back by these two verses from Ezekiel. Now, one could misuse these verses and turn everything into a social gospel, but this is to neglect the fact that God said their guilt was also that they were haughty and an abomination before him. However, this does not relieve us as Christians and/or humans of the responsibility we have to see everything we have as a gift from God and to be used for his glory. I spoke several weeks ago on the story of the rich young ruler and pointed out that fact most of us in America are rich, even though we do not consider ourselves rich. Do we not have a excess of food and a life of ease? Which one of us will worry about whether or not we will be able to give our children food tonight? I don’t have all the answers on this subject, but we need to find avenues to bring relief and the love of Christ to a starving and dying world.

TOKYO - Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of hind legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land….Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared.

This article reminded me that all men live by faith. The question remains, what is the object of that faith. If we find a fish like this in the White River, we would probably attribute it to pollution in the water. If a dog is born this way, we trace it back to inbreeding. But when our system of beliefs says that things have evolved we try and turn an extra flipper into the remains of a leg. Are there other links between the fossils of what they believe to be dolphins and this dolphin with an extra set of fins? Or could it be that this is the first found in 2000 or 50 million years? Scientist may call this proof or potential proof, but I would call it faith. If we refuse to have faith in God as creator, savior, and judge, we will ultimately have to place our faith in human knowledge or theory.

12Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

Do we have eternal security or not? Yes, if we share in Christ. These verses remind us of the danger of sin for all. Whether you consider yourself to be a Christian or not, stand firm, fight the good fight, do not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. These verses do not suggest than we can lose our salvation, but rather show the deceitfulness of sin and our own heart. Some will consider themselves to be alright. One’s own heart can deceive one into thinking you are alright with God, plus sin wants to deceive and tell one, you are alright with God. Sin says, it is okay, don’t worry about me, you have Christ. But if you can listen and be content with this deceit the reality is you may not share in Christ. As Christians we must be constantly watchful in the area of holiness. This does not cause us to doubt Christ, but trust constantly in Him.

We had a great time as a family last night “Trick or Treating“. The girls did great and enjoyed going around Lapel and seeing all of Kara’s friends from school. They dressed up like butterflies and had matching costumes for their Bitty Baby Dolls. Tyler was supposed to go dressed as a fireman, but wouldn’t wear his costume because he wanted his Reggie Miller uniform. I came home and asked if he wanted a Basketball mask to wear. He said yes. Heather was sure he would not wear it, because he had refused to wear the fireman hat. The little guy wore the basketball on his head almost the entire night. He really got into the evening. He wanted to walk instead of being carried, and he even tried to hand out his candy to the lady at the fifth house we visited.