On Blogging Hiatus

Mood: Task-oriented.... sort of
Playing: My bathroom fan running and Chip's classical station in the other room

I have really been on blogging overkill the last week or so... most of it out of my present wrestlings and thoughts. Thanks to all of you for your posts, encouragement, and challenges (Penguins - I responded to your comment in my last entry -- please check it out and respond as you wish). I am beginning to form a more definite decision about specific ministry to move toward, but I don't want to post it until I am more confident about it.

Also, in regard to my title: I wanted to give a disclaimer in case I become less frequent in my blogs, or possibly less lengthy and/or without as much content (some of you may be relieved - I think I exhausted myself by thinking too much!) :) But really, I am behind in my studies already and I really want to be more disciplined in my classes. Also, we had our first meeting for SNT (the International BSU meetings at U of L)... I have been blessed with the opportunity to organize/lead the music this year, and it has been wonderful but also time-consuming. Please pray for us and the new students that we will be able to establish friendships and minister to them in a way that meets their greatest needs. For those of you in the Louisville area who desire to minister to internationals: please contact me for information - we could always use more help!

On a closing note, I have been reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer for my Systematic Theology class. We are to use it as a supplement to our daily devotions, and I have really been enjoying it. This writing is meant for the "average Joe," and doesn't require an education in theology to understand. Elizabeth Elliot said Packer "plainly shows us ordinary folks what it means to know God." It has influenced such people as Michael Card and Charles Swindoll - it's practical, inspiring, and easy to read. I highly recommend checking it out. Here is an excerpt to (hopefully) whet your appetite:

Excerpt from Chapter 3, "Knowing and Being Known":
"What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it - the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is not moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.
"This is tremendous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort - the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates - in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.
"There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and am I glad!), and that he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. We cannot work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know not merely that we know God, but that he knows us."

Interested? Get a copy of the book and learn more about what it means to know God!