tittles20's Xanga

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:40:25 GMT

Dear Annie,

It’s been so great getting to know you these past two years, and it’s been fun to be a part of your life as you got engaged. I can’t believe that your wedding is less than a month away!! I’m so happy for you especially since I can tell that you and Ethan have really set your hearts on serving God together. Marriage is an awesome thing that can get better and better as the years go by. And I wish you all the happiness that it brings. I’m excited to watch and see how God’s plan unfolds for you and Ethan in your life together. Maybe someday we’ll see each other on the mission field. I’ll be praying for you during the crazy days before the wedding!!

Love ya,

Megan

PS: Enjoy the Honeymoon!!!!

Dear Kristi,

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you better this past semester. I especially enjoyed our little chats about marriage. It’s so fun to watch you go through this exciting time in your life. I can tell that you are really happy, and even though I’ve never met Josh I bet he’s an awesome man of God. I wish you all the blessings that marriage can bring. I think that it gets better and better every year. You will be in my prayers during these upcoming months, especially as you and Josh decipher God’s will for your life together.

Love ya,

Megan

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:24:02 GMT

Here I am chilling at Lake Komo in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on Megan and I's anniversary get-away:

I did hang out with her too...

At the lake view restaurant:

And relaxing on our little porch:

It went way too fast!

Please note that all these pics were done with the use of a timer, I think I did a great job!

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 01:36:08 GMT

Well, it has been a good long while since I last updated. Life has been busy, like a Pacific West Line Metra, it just flies by. I have been in a month long intensive Biblical Greek class, 8-12:00 everday, with a minimum of 5 hours of homework. It's been brutal but rewarding, and I pray that someday it will bear fruit for God's kingdom.

Also, Megan and I have been in communication and began (tenatively) to move forward with a missionary organization called TEAM (www.teamworld.org). We are still in the early stages but we like the process they have for new recruits, we will see.

Megan's parents are coming to visit this weekend, should be a good time although Grant is bringing his bike and once to humiliate me in front of my wife. As of now I will be racing my 49.00 Target special, the breaks are bad but I can make that puppy purr when need be.

I am discipling a guy at our church that is home for the summer, that has been massively rewarding and I love to speak into young men's lives and push them toward life in Jesus. To no ones suprise we are using Wild At Heart, that's right, I still believe in the essential Eldridge.

I have been writing some poetry again.

Too thin girl

Long finger marble knuckles

Not enough skin sewed over bones

The mirror has been a liar for so long

But no one knows, no one even sees her.

She is invisible like wind

Her father forgot her name long ago

Her mother is dripping in denial

She is a skeleton with a heart that is famined and dried up

Like an African disaster.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Fri, 26 May 2006 22:11:50 GMT

Meet Abe. We are dog-watching this weekend. He is a Boston Terrier. He is easily freightened and often trembles with fear, but thankfully he only poops outside, which is cool.

I could get used to having a dog, I think. I don't have to talk to him, we both just kind of sit around and chill.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Mon, 15 May 2006 15:35:55 GMT

Here are some pics for Megan and I's meeting with the fam. Although there are no pics to show it, the men all played a round of disc golf which I handely won, it really wasn't that hard either.

Here Megan teaches us the etiquette of picnic wiffleball.

Always quick to take the most humble seat. Here you see that Brian has stolen a shirt I purchased at Plato's Closet in Fairfield over three years ago.

It took a lot of begging, but we finally talked my parents into meeting us half way, just trying to keep the family together, you know how I am!

Monday, May 08, 2006

Mon, 08 May 2006 22:51:23 GMT

26 and not yet bald!!

So my birthday was on Sunday, I got to see my family in Lafayette, Indiana. I wanted to show my favorite gift, my new softball shirt from Annie Rastatter, thanks Annie! A big shout out as well to the infamous T-Bish who designed the shirt, very cool, very Thirsty conference!

Monday, April 24, 2006

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:00:18 GMT

Here is my final tool for discussion on the question I asked last week about homosexuality: http://www.wheaton.edu/CACE), go to the first booklet by Stan Jones it is easy to read, compassionate and helpful.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 16:45:56 GMT

A promise kept: Equality Riders go to Wheaton

******************************************
SOULFORCE PRESS RELEASE: April 21, 2006
For Immediate Release
Contact: Richard Lindsay, 646-258-7193
richard@equalityride.com
******************************************

(WHEATON, IL) - Equality Riders wrapped up two days of dialogue with the students, administration and faculty of Wheaton College today. Riders were welcomed to the campus, where they spoke in classes, presented and shared meals with students.

Wheaton was, in many ways, the inspiration for the ride. While he was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, Equality Ride co-director Jacob Reitan met a closeted gay Wheaton student in Chicago. When the discussion turned to the evangelical school's policy on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, the student told Reitan if he came out, he could be expelled from the school.

"I told him I thought it was a horrible policy, and it should be changed," Reitan said. "But then he looked at me and said, 'Actually, I think it's a good policy. I think it's a sin to be gay.'"

Reitan was taken aback, and promised to bring a group of LGBT-affirming Christians to Wheaton to present a different message.

"Coming to Wheaton is the fulfillment of a dream," Reitan said. "We're here to keep a promise I made three years ago, that I would bring a group of LGBT people to Wheaton who affirm their sexuality and know God loves them as they are."

Reitan continued, "We are very thankful to Wheaton College, President Duane Litfin and Provost Stan Jones for welcoming us to campus. They worked with us admirably to plan this visit and the presentations and discussions went smoothly and fairly."

A highlight of the two days of dialogue was a panel discussion in the school's gymnasium, which drew around 1500 students, faculty and community members. The college, whose most famous alum is Billy Graham, has a strong academic reputation and the discussion was spirited and wide-ranging. Soul Force panelists Jacob Reitan, Richard Lindsay, and Jay Johnson discussed subjects with the Wheaton panel ranging from biblical exegesis, theology, psychology, sociology, law, politics and Christian ethics.

A central part of the forum was the issue of academic freedom. The school's administration explained to the Equality Riders that Wheaton's community covenant, which restricts homosexual behavior, is a statement of faith that applies to all students, straight or gay. Wheaton administrators stated that any students standing in support of the goals of the Equality Ride would be risking disciplinary action.

"It is unacceptable for an institution of higher education with a reputation like Wheaton's to suggest that a student could not, after study, thought and prayer, come to the conclusion that homosexuality is not a sin without risking expulsion," Reitan said.

In addition to his academic training in philosophical theology and position at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA, Jay Johnson provided the personal experience of being a Wheaton alum and son of a Wheaton faculty member.

Johnson's motivation for sitting on the panel with Soulforce was more than academic. Johnson said, "I was thinking about what it was like for me to be a scared, closeted student at this school and how much it would have meant to me to hear someone say I could be gay, I could be Christian, and I could have a wonderful life."

After the presentations and formal dialogues were over, Wheaton students gathered with Equality Riders and other community members at a local restaurant for dinner and informal discussion. As their time together drew to a close, Equality Riders went through the now-familiar ritual of breaking off the intense conversations that had started over dinner, exchanging hugs and e-mail addresses with students and heading for the bus. Before the bus headed back to the hotel, some Wheaton students took a brief tour of the bus and even donated jars of food for the Equality Ride hamster, Ryder.

"We've made so many new friends at every stop," said Equality Rider David Coleman. "It's like we've planted seeds everywhere we've been and we'll just have to wait to see which ones bear fruit."

For more information on the Equality Ride stop at Wheaton college, see: www.equalityride.com/wheaton.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 16:15:58 GMT

So here is Soul Force's view on Romans 1, and then a response by me using mostly a Piper sermon's notes that I put together.

Soul Force view

PASSAGE 4
ROMANS 1:26-27
NATURAL AND UNNATURAL

What does Romans 1:26-27 say about God?

For our discussion, this is the most controversial biblical passage of them all. In Romans 1:26-27 the apostle Paul describes non-Jewish women who exchange "natural use for unnatural" and non-Jewish men who "leave the natural use of women, working shame with each other."

This verse appears to be clear: Paul sees women having sex with women and men having sex with men, and he condemns that practice. But let's go back 2,000 years and try to understand why.

Paul is writing this letter to Rome after his missionary tour of the Mediterranean. On his journey Paul had seen great temples built to honor Aphrodite, Diana, and other fertility gods and goddesses of sex and passion instead of the one true God the apostle honors. Apparently, these priests and priestesses engaged in some odd sexual behaviors -- including castrating themselves, carrying on drunken sexual orgies, and even having sex with young temple prostitutes (male and female) -- all to honor the gods of sex and pleasure.

The Bible is clear that sexuality is a gift from God. Our Creator celebrates our passion. But the Bible is also clear that when passion gets control of our lives, we're in deep trouble.

When we live for pleasure, when we forget that we are God's children and that God has great dreams for our lives, we may end up serving the false gods of sex and passion, just as they did in Paul's time. In our obsession with pleasure, we may even walk away from the God who created us -- and in the process we may cause God to abandon all the great dreams God has for our lives.

Did these priests and priestesses get into these behaviors because they were lesbian or gay? I don't think so. Did God abandon them because they were practicing homosexuals? No. Read the text again.

In our Soulforce video, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy, the Rev. Dr. Louis B. Smedes, a distinguished Christian author and ethicist, describes exactly how the Bible says these promiscuous priests and priestesses got into this mess. Once again it has nothing to do with homosexuality:

SMEDES: "The people Paul had in mind refused to acknowledge and worship God, and for this reason were abandoned by God. And being abandoned by God, they sank into sexual depravity."

SMEDES: "The homosexuals I know have not rejected God at all; they love God and they thank God for his grace and his gifts. How, then, could they have been abandoned to homosexuality as a punishment for refusing to acknowledge God?"

SMEDES: "Nor have the homosexuals that I know given up heterosexual passions for homosexual lusts. They have been homosexual from the moment of their earliest sexual stirrings. They did not change from one orientation to another; they just discovered that they were homosexual. It would be unnatural for most homosexuals to have heterosexual sex."

SMEDES: "And the homosexual people I know do not lust after each other any more than heterosexual people do... their love for one another is likely to be just as spiritual and personal as any heterosexual love can be."

Thank you, Dr. Smedes. (To get a copy of the video featuring Dr. Smedes, There's a Wideness in God's Mercy, visit www.soulforce.org.)

Getting to know a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender person of faith will help you realize that it is unreasonable (and unjust) to compare our love for each other to the rituals of the priests and priestesses who pranced around the statues of Aphrodite and Diana. Once again, I feel certain this passage says a lot about God, but nothing about homosexuality as we understand it.

You'll also note that Romans 2 begins with "Therefore, [referring to Romans 1], you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself..." Even after he describes the disturbing practices he has seen, Paul warns us that judging others is God's business, not ours.

And then my response with Piper sermon notes

God's Wrath Against Mankind

24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies (bodies are meant to be a temple of the Holy Spirit) with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural (I believe to mean sexual relations) relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty (?) for their perversion.

My notes

Exchanged truth of God for a lie: idolatry taking place everywhere Paul went, which is in opposition to the one truth God of Israel

As a result of worshiping and serving created things instead of the Creator, the wage of their sin was that God gave them over to shameful lusts.

What are these shameful lusts? Unnatural relations are what Paul defines them as.

How then are these unnatural relations characterized? Same sex “inflamed” lust for each other.

Piper notes

First argument: So, the argument goes, it is not unnatural when a homosexual person has homosexual relations, it is only unnatural when heterosexual persons have homosexual relations and (by implication) homosexual persons have heterosexual relations.

Response: Does a natural heterosexual burn with lust for another man? If not, it is very unlikely that what Paul is dealing with here is the subject of heterosexuals engaging in homosexuality.

2-"Contrary to nature" in this text, as it most Hellenistic literature of the time, meant homosexual behavior per se. That's what Paul regards as unnatural.

3- The three-fold sequence of thought goes like this:

· Step 1 - Human beings exchange God for what God has made; we prefer the creature to the Creator. · Step 2 - God hands us over to what we prefer. · Step 3 - We act out externally and bodily in our sexual relations a dramatization of the internal, spiritual condition of the fallen human soul, namely, the horrendous exchange of God for man and the images of our power.—found 3 times in verses 23-28

3. The reason Paul focuses on homosexuality in these verses is because it is the most vivid dramatization in life of the profoundest connection between the disordering of heart-worship and the disordering of our sexual lives. I'll try to say it simply, though it is weighty beyond words.

We learn from Paul in Ephesians 5:31-32 that, from the beginning, manhood and womanhood existed to represent or dramatize God's relation to his people and then Christ's relation to his bride, the church. In this drama, the man represents God or Christ and is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The woman represents God's people or the church. And sexual union in the covenant of marriage represents pure, undefiled, intense heart-worship. That is, God means for the beauty of worship to be dramatized in the right ordering of our sexual lives.

But instead, we have exchanged the glory of God for images, especially of ourselves. The beauty of heart-worship has been destroyed. Therefore, in judgment, God decrees that this disordering of our relation to him be dramatized in the disordering of our sexual relations with each other. And since the right ordering of our relationship to God in heart-worship was dramatized by heterosexual union in the covenant of marriage, the disordering of our relationship to God is dramatized by the breakdown of that heterosexual union.

Homosexuality is the most vivid form of that breakdown. God and man in covenant worship are represented by male and female in covenant sexual union. Therefore, when man turns from God to images of himself, God hands us over to what we have chosen and dramatizes it by male and female turning to images of themselves for sexual union, namely their own sex. Homosexuality is the judgment of God dramatizing the exchange of the glory of God for images of ourselves. (See the parallel uses of "exchange" in verses 25 and 26.)

4. Which leads us to one last word: The healing of the homosexual soul, as with every other soul, will be the return of the glory God to its rightful place in our affections.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:59:24 GMT

hey all, just had a question and was looking for your opinions. "should we, as the church, accept evangelical homosexuals into our community of believers if they see the Bible as not opposing the homosexual lifestyle?" -- if this at all interests you check out a website called soulforce.org, they are a group of homosexuals going from christian campus to campus with the message that the church must stop oppressing them. i am excited to hear their argument, although the websites Biblical points are pretty weak...