Undespised Youth

Saved by Christ. Husband. Dad of Two. The rest will all be history.

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8 years, 9 years this April. #blessed #thankful

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Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. C. S. Lewis

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Small acts of obedience are bricks building the kingdom. -Aaron Salvato 

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“Not many of us , I think, would ever naturally say that we have known God. The words imply a definiteness and matter-of-factness of experience to which most of us, if we are honest, have to admit that we are still strangers.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 20

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Any strength or intelligence or skill or beauty they have comes from him. On every scale of excellence, he is infinitely greater than the best person you ever knew or ever heard of. Being infinite, he is inexhaustibly interesting. It is impossible, therefore, that God be boring. His continual demonstration of the most intelligent and interesting actions is volcanic. As the source of every good pleasure, he himself pleases fully and finally. If that’s not how we experience him, we are either dead or sleeping. It is therefore astonishing how little effort is put into knowing God.

-John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 15-16

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God Doesn't Always Make Sense

God doesn't always make sense and that's okay with me. If He did, would He still be God? Transcendence is a prerequisite to hold the title, God. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts, His ways are higher than my ways.

Make more sense, to have the sense, that God wouldn’t always make sense than to make sense of His transcendence.

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“We don’t want people to leave our teachings enamored with Paul-our any other man. We want them to walk away from our teaching glorifying God who did great things in and through these men.”

Charlie H. Campbell, Teaching and Preaching God’s Word, 74

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“Don’t strive to prepare and preach ‘great sermons’ but to magnify a great Savior.”

 -Warren Wiersbe and David Wiersbe, The Elements of Preaching, 44.

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There are no regrets in heaven, no remorseful tears, no second thoughts, no lost causes.

-John Blanchard

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if your definition of love stresses affectionate feelings more than unselfish actions, you cripple your relationships.

tim keller (via hannaoliviaway)

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Our enemies are on every side, so must our armor be. William Gurnall

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Now we cannot...discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, You must do this. I can't. C. S. Lewis

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He that made all things is more truly an object of confidence than all things that he has made. -Charles Spurgeon

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When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. C. S. Lewis

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When I get to heaven, I shall see three wonders there: the first wonder will be to see many people there whom I did not expect to see; the second wonder will be to miss many people whom I did expect to see; and the third and greatest wonder of all will be to find myself there.

John Newton

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Powerful! I love seeing people get together a produce for the Creator. We take what He has given us and mix it together to make one gift for Savior. Collaboration is a beautiful gift.

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Answering The Skeptic with our Lives

Truth is absent in our culture therefore trust is rare.

“Today we’ve lost the confidence that statements of fact can ever be anything more than just opinions; we no longer know that anything is certain beyond our subjective preferences. The word truth now mean “true for me” and nothing more. We have entered an era of dogmatic skepticism.” -Francis J. Beckwith, Moral Relativism, Feet Firmly Planted In The Air, p. 20

People do not feel safe to trust anymore.

“Students feel safer as doubters than as believers, and as perpetual seekers rather than eventual finders.” -Kelly Monroe, Finding God at Harvard

When we are faithful and consistent to the world around us then they see the Father’s faithfulness to them.

Matthew 5:16-Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

As Christians, are our lives the answer to the skeptics and perpetual doubters?

To be a witness does not consist in engaging propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.” -Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard

We need to be bearers of truth of God’s Word in our culture so they can learn to trust again!