This is my Baby

Cooper Edwin Anderson
7 lbs. 10 oz. 21 inches

Your City

So when I was in High School and in Jr. High I was all about the school I went to. You know you have a certain amount of pride. I was always on sports teams and stuff and so you get to wear your jersey… you have your school’s logo on your back and there is a sense of pride that goes along with that, especially when you get to high school. I brought my letterman’s jacket with me tonight and this was my high school, I was an Atwater High School Falcon. I bled blue and white for 4 years, if I went to a football game there I would sit on our teams side. I have friends that I graduated with who are now teachers and coaches at Atwater. When I graduated I coached water polo there for two years, I loved everything about my high school.

When I was a senior in high school my friend and I led the student section at all of the games, specifically basketball. Now we really enjoyed doing this at the basketball games because you could yell at the other team’s fans and make fun of them and what not. We wanted to assert our dominance over the other school, because we were Atwater High, we stood for our school and we would stop at nothing to preserve our precious name, to promote our school at all costs, because we loved our school and who we were.

Now Jesus said in Matthew 28, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Just like my love of Atwater high school your desire should be to make disciples of those that are around you and near you, you should love your city, you should love the people in your city so much that you would want to make it hard for people in your city to go to hell. I mean that is our goal as Christians right, to make it hard for people to go to hell?

Sickypoo and MMS

Well as most of you know, my wife is about to pop, I mean in a few days we will be waking up to the joyous sounds of a baby crying at 3:00 AM. So mentally I have been preparing myself, making sure the house is clean so when Sarah does pop we will be ready to go, packing our bags, making sure the nursery is perfect, all that stuff that first time Dads are supposed to do. And everything was going great, there were even a couple days I got a nap in and was hoping Sarah would go into labor that night because I was ready. Surprise surprise, that didnt happen, as a matter of fact, because God has a sense of humor last night I woke up sweating to a 102 degree temperature, fun right. SO i slept all day until noon then decided I needed to get some work done today so I came into the office where I got the best news of today (Not hard to do considering how deathly ill I am).

iPhone is coming out with it's 3.0 update! Now I understand that I am a really big nerd for being excited about this update, but now I will be able to send picture messages to my friends, something that I have sorely missed since I dove into the world of Super Phone. Granted, the 3.0 update isn't great enough to cure my sickness, it has still been a bright spot in a rather horrible day.

Just wanted to share that with you. Peace and Grace.

Sin and Coral

I was reading through my devotional this morning and something stuck out to me in a big way, sin. Sin is something that gets tossed around quite a bit in church circles things like, “Hey brother, how is God’s provision for your life right now and are you living righteously or as a sinner?” (Because naturally that’s how people talk). But sin in general has become an abstract idea, something that we are “working on” but never eradicating.

And for seasoned Christians like myself and many others, sin turns into something we discuss, something we don’t really care to disclose, but something we know has to be talked about, something that other people do, but not the righteous who sit in the pews Sunday after Sunday. And it is a shame that people who have had a relationship with Christ for so long can go their entire life devoid of knowing that they are sinning.

When we are first introduced into this relationship with our maker everything is so fresh and new, and when we sin as a new believer it stings, its is like putting on a shirt when you have a killer sunburn, its uncomfortable, it just doesn’t feel right. But pretty soon that sunburn goes away little by little, and pretty soon you don’t feel the discomfort that was once nearly unbearable. So we start to give into little sins thinking they are not as bad as others, we think well I am not killing anyone, or this sin only affects me, or me lying is easier than me telling the truth or whatever it may be. We soon become calloused and hardened to the reality of the little sins in our life.

But what is a little sin? Doesn’t the tiny coral creature build a rock that destroys Navies? Doesn’t the slow dripping water destroy boulders? Doesn’t one teaspoon of oil destroy thousands of gallons of drinking water? Is there such a thing as a little sin or is the little white lie you told this morning responsible for Christ being on the cross. Is there such thing as a little sin or is the website you saw today in the privacy of your home to thank for Jesus suffering? What is a little sin?

Prayer... An Effective Tool?

Hmmmm.... I was listening to a podcast of a good friend of mine deliver a message to his local church this morning. Now the message itself was a solid one, he has a heart for the poor and orphaned and widowed and wants to see the church be the hands and feet of God. It is incredibly inspirational to hear his heart poured out to a community of believers and I want to go be a part of his ministry even though he is three hours away. But one thing that really stood out to me was the idea that we know prayer is an effective tool because we are in the midst of a spiritual battle not a physical one.

This got me to thinking about how great our father is that He would spare us from battling with the enemy ourselves, that His love is so great that He would have his heavenly hosts do our bidding for us. But how is it that we help? How is it that we help promote change?

I am reminded of the book Piercing the Darkness by Frank E. Peretti. And we see this town in the midst of a spiritual battle and all that is stopping the enemy from overtaking this entire community is one little old lady who gets up and prays, and prays fervently.

What is it that we are doing to help the spiritual battle that is surrounding us everyday? Are we trying to take the world on ourselves or our we fighting on our knees, with our heads in our hands and and our petitions going upward? Christ prayed and met with God all of the time, Jesus was always concerned with His father's will first and his was secondary.

We need to be as the tax collector in the synagogue beating his chest begging for forgiveness for sinners like us, we need to commit to prayer without seizing, knowing God's will and submitting to it and doing our part in this war that is all around us.

Doing the Dishes

Now don't get me wrong, I am not doing the dishes, I do do the dishes, as a matter of fact since my wife has been pregnant I have gotten very good at a lot of household chores that I chose to be bad at before. But last weekend two of my closest buddies came down to Selma, Jordan and Caleb, Caleb brought his wife along too. We had a blast, we went to BJ's, came back to my house and played Wii and Snatch, then we woke up the next day and went to church.

The day was ridiculously long after that as I had to attend a coed baby shower being put on by our church, the very reason Caleb and Jordan were there.(I wasn't going to endure this thing alone, so i threw them under the bus with me). After that i had High School YM and by the time I got home I needed to clean up the house. When I walked into the kitchen I realized all the dishes were done, I asked Sarah if she did them and she thought i had done them. Upon further investigation I came to realize Lori, Caleb's wife, had cleaned up everything from the night before.

Now I want Lori to come over more often. Isn't this how we should be with the world, shouldn't we want to take other people's dirty dishes and clean them up for them? Lori wasn't asked or expected to do my dishes, but she did them and as a result I not only like her more but my respect for her has skyrocketed. Shouldn't we be taking those who are burdened with their own dirty dishes and lighten their load? Help them a long, give them a hand up when all they can say is the pile of dirty filthy nastiness?

Really... honestly Jason?

Okay, so I am slightly ashamed to admit it, but I have been watching the bachelor this season, granted, it is only because me wife is such a fanatic and I only catch the second hour because I watch Chuck from 8-9, but regardless, I have been following the life of Jason Mesnick for the last 8 weeks. And frankly I have gotta say that this guy went from the most beloved bachelor in history to the most despised.

Now first of all we have to come to terms with the fact that the whole idea of the bachelor is a horrible way to meet your wife. Going into a situation with the mindset that one of these women will be my wife is a horrible way to think. Then beyond that dating multiple women at the same time, leading all of them on, breaking hearts along the way just so you can find "true love" is a very skewed view of reality.

We as a society and more specifically as men have lost our way in this world, we think that conquering women for the sake of ourselves is a good thing, we think as long as we are searching for happiness it is okay to leave a path of destruction in our wake. Often times we forget we are dirt, we are made from dirt and dirt is what we will turn into. Manhood needs to be reclaimed, it needs to be redefined and rethought. Manhood isn't conquering women, it isn't self-glorifying or self-gratifying, it isn't pound my fist because i went on three dates last week and haven't called any of them back. I am sick of men thinking they are made of gold when we have come from the mud.

Genesis 3:7 says that we were made from dust, so why do we pump ourselves up to be more than we are.

Men search for honor, and the sooner we realize that honor is serving the least of these then the sooner it is we will recapture real manhood.