Breaking the Rules of Small Talk

Good post from Matt Perman:

Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, has a good post on making small talk more effective (and authentic) that makes the simple point: be yourself. But to do this, you have to ignore conventional wisdom’s first rule of small talk:

Small talk experts claim that when you first meet a person, you should avoid unpleasant, overly personal, and highly controversial issues.

Wrong! Don’t listen to these people! Nothing has contributed more to the development of boring chitchatters everywhere. The notion that everyone can be everything to everybody at all times is completely off the mark. Personally, I’d rather be interested in what someone was saying, even if I disagreed, than be catatonic any day.

There’s one guaranteed way to stand out in the professional world: Be yourself. I believe that vulnerability—yes, vulnerability—is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today. Too many people confuse secrecy with importance. Business schools teach us to keep everything close to our vest. But the world has changed. Power, today, comes from sharing information, not withholding it. More than ever, the lines demarcating the personal and the professional have blurred. We’re an open-source society, and that calls for open-source behavior. And as a rule, not many secrets are worth the energy required to keep them secret.

Let Another Praise You

Voddie Baucham recently wrote a blog post contrasting the recent speeches made by David Robinson and Michael Jordan as they were both inducted into the hall of fame. I had briefly heard of the contrast shortly after the event, but until now had not read much of what was said by either man. I thought Voddie did a good job at highlighting what was said by each player and revealing the sad state of anyone who is in constant need of attention and praise from others in order to justify himself.

He said at one point while listening to Jordan, Proverbs 27:2 came to his mind: “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.” Here's one paragrah from the post, but I'd encourage you to read the whole thing:

"There was a stark difference between the two acceptance speeches. As I listened to the two speeches, all I could think of was the old commercial catchphrase, 'Like Mike... If I could be like Mike.' Unfortunately, in this instance, Mike was the last person anyone should aspire to be like. This was definitely not a Michael Jordan highlight. Jordan’s Speech was self-centered, indulgent, arrogant, and at times embarrassing. In contrast, David Robinson rose to the occasion and made a brief, inspiring, encouraging speech (see his speech here) that made his family, his team, and his friends proud."

(HT:Tim Challies)

Stirring Your Affections For Christ

In a recent interview, Matt Chandler answered various questions posed by the Leadership Journal.

I liked his response to the question, "What does warring against sin look like?" I liked it because it speaks to a gospel-oriented fight instead of doing behaviorism.

Sanctification here at The Village begins by answering two questions. What stirs your affections for Jesus Christ? And what robs you of those affections? Many of the things that stifle growth are morally neutral. They're not bad things. Facebook is not bad. Television and movies are not bad. I enjoy TV, but it doesn't take long for me to begin to find humorous on TV what the Lord finds heartbreaking.

The same goes for following sports. It's not wrong, but if I start watching sports, I begin to care too much. I get stupid. If 19-year-old boys are ruining your day because of what they do with a ball, that's a problem. These things rob my affections for Christ. I want to fill my life with things that stir my affections for him. After a funeral I walked around the cemetery and found a grave of a guy who died when he was my age. I felt my mortality in that moment and it made me love the Lord. It really did. Some types of epic films do that for me, and so does angst-filled music.

We want our people to think beyond simply what's right and wrong. We want them to fill their lives with things that stir their affections for Jesus Christ and, as best as they can, to walk away from things that rob those affections—even when they're not immoral.

(HT:Christ Community Church)

Saddened by Westboro Baptist Church

Have you ever heard of this church? Upon first glance, you might believe it to be a farce. But sadly, it is very real.

I ran across this video yesterday on Brett McCracken's blog. It's a short documentary done by the BBC where a journalist spends several days getting to know the people of the church. The video is just under an hour long, but I found every minute of it to be an interesting look at a very confused group of people.

I went through several different emotions while watching the video: anger, disgust, intrigue, shock, disbelief, sadness. It's this last emotion that has stuck with me. I truly am saddened that these people have embraced this message of hate and have missed the fullness of the gospel. And I am saddened that many non-Christians see this and are further turned away from who God really is.

It is true that God hates sin. In this day, many downplay this reality. God is often portrayed only as a God of love that really doesn't think sin is that big of a deal. But sin is a big deal. So much so that God the Father sent His Son to gruesomely die and absorb His wrath towards it. But thankfully there's more to the gospel than this hate.

Consider this logic from Isaiah 30:18 (with a little help from my ESV Study Bible this morning). After 17 verses of a people being portrayed as rebellious, wicked, and stubborn, Isaiah says THEREFORE the LORD waits to be gracious to this very people. Because of their sinfulness, God is waiting to be gracious to them. That's amazing. And that's the gospel that the world needs to hear and I need to hear.

Moralism and being "raised right"

Al Mohler's recent blog post looks at the controversy that Paul addresses in the book of Galatians. The Galatian church was believing a false gospel. They thought that circumcision and other such outward behavior was really the point, what set them right with God.

Having grown up in the South, a particular section of Mohler's post resonated with me. He mentions how the novelist Ferrol Sams described the deeply-ingrained tradition of being "raised right.":

"As he explained, the child who is 'raised right' pleases his parents and other adults by adhering to moral conventions and social etiquette. A young person who is 'raised right' emerges as an adult who obeys the laws, respects his neighbors, gives at least lip service to religious expectations, and stays away from scandal. The point is clear -- this is what parents expect, the culture affirms, and many churches celebrate. But our communities are filled with people who have been 'raised right' but are headed for hell."

This is by no means an indictment on my parents or any other set of parents necessarily. It is the sin nature in parent and child that makes us hard-wired to believe that following rules makes us righteous. And living in the South, with a "church on every corner", makes it very easy to continue to believe right behavior equals right standing with God.

Over the last few months, God has pointed out some major ways that I have embraced behaviorism without even knowing it. I am thankful that He is continuing the work that He promised to complete in me, by stripping me of all my self-made righteousness, and causing me to cling only to the righteousness of Christ.

Mohler's conclusion sums it up well:

"We are justified by faith alone, saved by grace alone, and redeemed from our sin by Christ alone. Moralism produces sinners who are (potentially) better behaved. The Gospel of Christ transforms sinners into the adopted sons and daughters of God.

The Church must never evade, accommodate, revise, or hide the law of God. Indeed, it is the Law that shows us our sin and makes clear our inadequacy and our total lack of righteousness. The Law cannot impart life but, as Paul insists, it 'has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.' [Gal. 3:24]

The deadly danger of moralism has been a constant temptation to the church and an ever-convenient substitute for the Gospel. Clearly, millions of our neighbors believe that moralism is our message. Nothing less than the boldest preaching of the Gospel will suffice to correct this impression and to lead sinners to salvation in Christ.

Hell will be highly populated with those who were 'raised right.' The citizens of heaven will be those who, by the sheer grace and mercy of God, are there solely because of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Moralism is not the gospel."

Solidarity of the past vs. Individualism of today

Brett McCracken recently wrote an interesting article entitled "Could Woodstock Happen Again?" In it he briefly analyzes the cultural environment of 1969, pointing out how 500,000 united for this epic event. If his analysis is right, it's pretty amazing how our culture today is so utterly different than it was just 40 years ago regarding community. The whole article is good, but his conclusion pretty much sums it up:

There was a lot going on, and, importantly, it was all coinciding with the heyday of mass culture. The news of the world was now everywhere, the trends proliferated, the horrors unshielded from the public eye. And it was all on a limited number of media channels. Everyone saw and experienced the same stuff. This made it possible for so many people of the same age to be on the same cultural and spiritual page. They’d all grown up in the same Campbell’s soup post-war America. They were all equally nervous about Vietnam.

These days, there is still a lot going on, but by now we are used to a constant barrage of shocking news and earth-shattering events. Nothing riles us up anymore. Plus, there are far too many channels with which to receive information. Everyone gets a different story. Our music and cultural tastes are infinitely more disparate than that of our parents’ generation. Everything about culture is personal and fragmented rather than public and cohesive. Aside from the YouTube viral video of the week, nothing is really shared anymore.

Something like Woodstock simply could not happen. 500,000 young people in this era would never be able to agree on a motivating cause, let alone a lineup of bands.

But that’s okay. It’s not like Woodstock changed much of anything anyway. Its lasting importance is mainly that of an American cultural artifact—a nostalgic celebration of a revolution that nearly happened but didn’t. That, and an amazing 4-hour concert DVD.

A good reminder for those who aren't married

A recent post by Arnold Barlow:

I think it's part of the human condition that many of us feel lonely, if not all the time then at least from time to time. And if you're single, it's easy to think the antidote for loneliness is matrimony. But according to Henri Nouwen, those who marry because of loneliness will likely end up as lonely spouses. Our condition is not changed by our circumstance.

"We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated, intuitive knowledge - that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. This truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence. Thus we keep hoping that one day we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfill our potentials, the book which will explain everything, and the place where we can feel at home. Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands and prepares us for bitterness and dangerous hostility when we start discovering that nobody, and nothing, can live up to our absolutistic expectations.

Many marriages are ruined because neither partner was able to fulfill the often hidden hope that the other would take his or her loneliness away. And many celibates live with the naive dream that in the intimacy of marriage their loneliness will be taken away."

- Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, pp. 84-85.

The redemption of creation/culture conversation

For the last six weeks or so, I have been inundated with information and conversation about the restoration and redemption of culture/creation. It began with my Church and the World class at RTS. Then came a series that my church, Perimeter Church, has done. And then it seemed like every other blog post I was reading and conversation I was having had to do with this topic.

I think a lot of the discussion is very healthy. I think it is very beneficial to understand the world in the creation/fall/redemption/consummation framework. And I do believe all of creation including our cities and our jobs and everything else is going to be completely restored when Jesus comes back. We should not view the world as a sinking ship where our role is just to save as many souls as possible before it all burns. So I do agree that it is helpful to have these conversations and understand these ideas.

However, the problem is when there is an over-emphasis on the restoration of creation to the neglect of the glory of God shown in the salvation of the elect through the work of Christ on the cross. I like what Greg Gilbert said in an article over at 9Marks.

"Time after time, in book after book coming off of Christian presses, the highest excitement and joy is being ignited by something other than the sin-bearing work of Christ on the cross, and the most fervent appeals are for people to join God in doing this or that, rather than to repent and believe. In the process, the story of the gospel is made to be (deliberately or not) rather cross-less. That's one dangerous problem.

Another problem is not so much the shunting of the cross out of the center, as the remaking of it into something other than the substitutionary, wrath-bearing death of the Savior in the place of sinners for their sins. Thus Jesus’ death is often said to be the result of human evil or greed or power-lust or culture-making or any number of other things coming to their lowest, worst, most concentrated point and killing Jesus, who then conquers that worst-of-all-evils through his resurrection.

Don Carson hit on this in a blog-post some time ago when he wrote that,

'In recent years it has become popular to sketch the Bible's story-line something like this: Ever since the fall, God has been active to reverse the effects of sin. He takes action to limit sin's damage; he calls out a new nation, the Israelites, to mediate his teaching and his grace to others; he promises that one day he will come as the promised Davidic king to overthrow sin and death and all their wretched effects. This is what Jesus does: he conquers death, inaugurates the kingdom of righteousness, and calls his followers to live out that righteousness now in prospect of the consummation still to come.'

Carson calls this presentation of the Bible’s narrative 'painfully reductionistic,' and he’s right. There is no understanding here (explicit understanding, anyway) that sin is an offense against God rather than just an unfortunate circumstance humans have brought on themselves. There’s no sense of Jesus standing in the place of sinners to take the punishment that rightly should fall upon them. And for that matter, there’s no sense that there’s any punishment involved at all---just consequences. No divine wrath, just bad results. In other words, such a presentation of the gospel essentially leaves out of the meaning of the cross exactly what the Bible makes central to it: A) that Jesus was dying in the place of his people, and B) that on the cross he endured punishment for their sin (not just the results of it—the punishment for it), meted out by God the Father in his righteous wrath."

Does anyone else feel like this is a topic being talked about a lot lately? What are your thoughts?

(HT:Justin Taylor)

Heaven will solve all our problems

Wednesday night a week ago, my discipleship group met for the fourth time this summer to discuss Mere Christianity. At one point in our conversation, we started talking about heaven and what it would be like. Someone asked a question like, "Will all our questions about life be answered there?" We all threw around some thoughts and it made for some good conversation.

Then on Monday, I read Arnold's post about Jesus being the great Iconoclast. He quotes out of another Lewis book, A Grief Observed. Lewis answers our groups question brilliantly and is helpful for our humility as we learn more about who God is:

"Images of the Holy easily become holy images - sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are "offended" by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers.

All reality is iconoclastic.
...
Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet."

My ungrateful heart

I read this story in Luke 17 the other day. I don't believe I've ever noticed it before. It has really stuck with me the last couple of days.

Basically the story is this: Jesus meets ten lepers who beg for mercy. Jesus tells them to go to the priests. When they move in obedience toward the priests, they are all healed. Yet, only one of them (a Samaritan no less) turns back to praise God and to fall at Jesus' feet in thanksgiving. Jesus then asks, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"

These verses struck me because I felt like one of the other nine. I have not felt grateful for God's grace in my life lately. Why is that? I know the wretchedness that God has saved me from. I know that I was dead in my sin and was rescued by God's grace and power. I know that He has rescued me from the power of sin, so that it is no longer my master. The problem is connecting that head knowledge to my heart.

The truth is, I know I can't be grateful without God in Christ working it into my cold heart. And that is the whole point...I need help and He provides help when I come to the end of myself.

Psalm 3:3 - "But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head."

The High Cost of Friendship

I've thought about friendship a lot recently. I feel extremely blessed for the great community of guys that I have around me. But I also feel a bit of guilt and shame because I don't love them as well as I would like to. It's easier to stay on the surface rather than talking about heart issues. It's easier to avoid conflict rather than confessing and forgiving one another's sins. It's easier to merely talk about an issue than engaging in prayer for and with one another. There is a very high cost to my comfort in friendship.

Over at Relevant Magazine, Seth Hurd has written a good article about this high cost. He takes into account how this culture of social networking has played a large role in re-shaping what our friendships look like.

Here's an exerpt:

"Everything in life costs us something—in time, money, energy, love or emotion. Friends, real know-you-down-to-your-soul friends, come at a high cost. They guarantee a lifetime of broken hearts as we say goodbye, farewell and amen, again and again over the course of our lives.

Sadly, more and more people are finding that cost too high. Fifty years ago, the average person had three or more close friends and family members in which to confide. Today, that average has dropped to somewhere between two and one. The world-within-a-world of social networking has its benefits, but it’s also continually drawing us further into an “invent your own fantasy” identity and away from face-to-face relationships. This year, the average American will spend more time with their computer than with their spouse. As a study in the March 2009 International Business News so aptly put it, “Facebook, Twitter users among the loneliest in America.”

It’s easy to see why escaping to the social networking world is so inviting. On Facebook, you can hide behind a persona, be any version of yourself you can dream up. Online friends don’t borrow money and not pay it back, gossip or spill Gatorade in your car. They don’t show up at your house after just getting dumped and stay until 2 a.m. when you have to be at work in the morning. Online “friendships” are always efficient.

True friendship demands vulnerability. It requires that you rearrange your schedule, and intentionally plan time to spend with other people with no agenda. It demands choice, as sociologists agree that it’s only possible to have eight to 12 “real” friends, and attempting to manage more relationships than that only ends in a series of casual acquaintances. "

Christ to the Unreached

This is a powerful video about missions, particularly to unreached people. It's a great reminder of the work that God still wants to accomplish across the globe:

"...that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!" - Psalm 67:2-3

(HT:Justin Taylor)

Pigeon Mountain adventures

I just got back from a camping weekend with a few really good buddies of mine. We went to Pigeon Mountain in northwest Georgia. We had a good time walking and hiking around the area. However, two of the guys didn't have the best sleep because they somehow forgot their sleeping bags. Looking back, I definitely should have offered my tent-mate Ethan a share of my bag. But at the time it was pretty funny to see him come into the tent around 4am the second night with a camping chair. He set it up in the middle of the tent and proceeded to try to sleep a couple of hours in it. Needless to say, he didn't get much sleep during the weekend.

The goal Saturday morning was to go find the Overlook nearby. Being the navigator with a map, I was finding it difficult to locate where this overlook might be. I directed us to a few different places and we ended up off the mountain and driving around for over an hour. We did get to see some beautiful countryside. But it turns out, the overlook was about 1/4 mile from our campsite. On the map it said "Hood Overlook." Not sure how I missed that one. Here's a picture from it: The highlight of the trip for me was being in a dark cave for close to four hours with these guys. We were making our way through Pettijohns Cave. We shimmied, crawled, and worked our way through all kinds of slippery mess. Having been in there three times before, I was most qualified (though not extremely confident) to lead us to the goal of seeing the waterfall several miles in. Thankfully, after going through the Z-bends (Scott and Dan were champs getting us through that) and getting turned around, we ran into a few locals who helped us get to the waterfall and back.

Here are a few pics from this trip and from years before after coming out of the cave:From January of 2002 with some old friends from youth group:
From late 2000 or early 2001 with some college friends my freshman year:

Egotism

Roy Keely:

“Egotism is pathological self obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is indeed, a desperate response to frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.“

— Dallas Willard, pg15, The Divine Conspiracy

A Substantial Misunderstanding of Calvinism

I ran across this sermon a couple of days ago while visiting The Resurgence blog. It is by Dr. Dan Sweatt out of Lilburn, GA and it's entitled Young and Restless. In it he goes off on a good many people including John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, Al Mohler, and Mark Driscoll. Even though I like these guys, I'm not necessarily upset that he doesn't like them. It's why he doesn't like them, namely they're all Calvinists.

Now I know that many Christians do not embrace Calvinism, and that's okay. What struck me in this message however, is a blatant misunderstanding of what Calvinism really is. And it's this misunderstanding that I want to speak to.

If you don't have time to listen to all of it, try to listen to the 31 minute mark through the 41 minute mark. It is in these ten minutes that Dr. Sweatt really...well I'll just tell you what he says.

At one point he makes this statement:

"Calvinism has never, in the history of the world, survived the generation of a charismatic leader. When they die, the movement dies...Because the theology will not support church growth and evangelism. It will not do it. If you believe the doctrine you will not win souls."

I'm not really sure how he can make this statement. History is full of pastors and missionaries who have done much in the advancement of the kingdom while fully embracing Calvinistic theology (Judson, Carey, Patton, Bunyan, Owen, Edwards, Brainerd, Spurgeon, Whitefield, etc.).

There is still a greater misunderstanding to be pointed out though. It's when Dr. Sweatt begins talking about John 3:16. He acts as if when Calvinists come to this verse, they either ignore it or make it say something different than what it says. This is simply not true.

I'll defer to John Piper in response to this misunderstanding. In his sermon entitled God So Loved the World, Part 2 he says:

"We may, therefore, say to every human being, 'God loves you. And this is how he loves you: He gave his Son to die, so that if you would believe, your sins would be forgiven and you would have eternal life.'

That is what the love of God means and promises and does in John 3:16. And that’s why this verse has been so amazingly blessed of God over the centuries in bringing people to Christ and to salvation. It expresses what we love to call the free offer of the gospel. There are no limits to this offer: It goes out to all people of every ethnic group and every age and every socio-economic category and, best of all, to every degree of sinner—from the bad to the worst. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever”—indiscriminate and universal—“believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

He goes on to point out the ever-so-crucial distinction:

"The more amazing question is: Why do any of us come? Why do any of us receive Christ as the supreme Treasure of our lives? And the answer is: There is a greater love than the love of John 3:16. The love of John 3:16 is an amazing gift of Christ to the world so that the free offer to eternal life goes out to everyone: Believe and you will be saved. Believe and your sins will be forgiven, God’s wrath will be removed, you will have eternal joy with him. If you believe...

Those of you who believe on Christ, God wants you to know yourself loved, not only with universal love of John 3:16, but also with his death-conquering, hardness-removing, rebellion-eradicating, sight-imparting, faith-creating, personal, individual, invincible covenant love of which we are absolutely undeserving. He inspired the Gospel of John and I have preached this message so that you would know more fully and experience more deeply how you are loved."

It is for this death-conquering love that I am eternally grateful. And I will submit that is the only hope that a dying world has to come to know God.

Kingdom work is aligning your passions with need

I like what my friend Matt had to say about how your mission and your passion should be closely connected:

What makes people effective for mission...is their passion for the mission.

I had lunch last week with David Melton, campus director for Campus Outreach at UGA. I love having David and Jenny at our church and have a lot of fun watching God use David and the rest of the CO team on the campus. We were talking about CO's Summer Beach Project and the reason why some students really embrace talking about Jesus with complete strangers on the beach while other students would rather take a 5-iron to the temple. Here's what we came up with...

The critical difference between those who thrive in that environment and those who struggle had less to do with skill or personality than it did with sheer conviction and passion. People who enjoyed having those conversations on the beach thrived; those who didn't want to be there wilted.

Here's what that means for the rest of us - go where your passions collide with real need. Follow the leading of the Holy Spirit who wires you to enjoy people, places and events that desperately need the hope and freedom of the gospel. I know you don't think that your quirky hobby has any kingdom value but what if you were able to bring the values of God's kingdom into an arena that you love to be in already?

Here's how one man pulled it off - by starting a blog for fans of his favorite NBA team.

Don't wait for someone else to write your story for you. Look for needs in the people and places you love and do something about it.

Dancing should be required in the wedding ceremony

If my future wife lets me, this is exactly how I want to start my wedding:

The Reality of Depression in the lives of Christians

Relevant Magazine recently ran an interesting article on depression entitled Can "Real" Christians Be Depressed?, written by Mattie Germer. Having wrestled with depression some myself, I thought she had some good things to say about the topic. Here's her conclusion:

"Depression should be treated and can be put into remission through a course of psychoanalysis, cognitive therapy and/or antidepressant medication, supplemented by healthy doses of prayer within a loving Christian community. It is nonsensical to tell a depressed person that if he only read his Bible more or had better quiet times, his depression would surely be lifted. That would be like telling a diabetic that faith alone will regulate her insulin levels. Faith alone gives eternal salvation, but in the meantime, God has given us resources by which to make our temporal existences more palatable. Depression is certainly healed by the grace of God, sometimes directly and miraculously, but more often through the tools of His servants, like pharmacists, therapists, pastors and friends."

These are some thoughts I wish I would have understood in my early college days. Back then, I thought it was pretty abnormal to go through periods of depression. Thus, the guilt would pile on even more for not feeling what I thought I ought to feel. But there have been many in the Bible (as Mattie points out) and many great saints in history they have struggled with depression.

My favorite example of someone who has been used by God in a great way, but severely struggled with depression almost his entire life was William Cowper. He penned my favorite hymn of all time, God moves in a mysterious way. The reason I love this hymn (and most hymns redone by Red Mountain Music) is the deep-seated hope in God that is revealed so beautifully from those struggling with guilt and sorrow.

One final note on this subject. The biggest practical lesson I've learned regarding depression comes from the book (that I've mentioned before) called Spiritual Depression by Martyn Lloyd Jones. The idea is that we listen to ourselves for more that we speak truth to ourselves. We must constantly be reminding ourselves of who we are in Christ and that God loves us no matter how we might feel.

The Hurt Locker

I went to see The Hurt Locker last night with a few buddies. I thought it was really well done and a great movie about the war in Iraq. I would recommend going to see it. It should be playing at a indie film theater near you.

I thought Brett McCracken had a good review of the movie (without any spoilers); thoughts that I would agree with.

"It’s a visceral, affecting action film about contemporary urban warfare (perhaps most akin to something like Blackhawk Down) and it will leave you utterly drained and yet thoroughly satisfied, with a newfound appreciation for the complex and frightening experiences of our servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Read the whole thing here

A different definition of success

Tonight, I started my Church and the World class at RTS. We talked about the idea of calling and success for the Christian. From the parable of the talents we see that Jesus rewards faithful service, not necessarily a big return for Him. That's a hard thing to really believe because of how pervasive the idea of the importance of a large impact is in the Western world.

Through this, I was reminded by a video my friend Bert posted on his blog a couple of days ago. It's about a man who was faithful in God's call on his life. He didn't quite know the impact he had...but his name is famous in heaven. It's an incredible story that hopefully will encourage you to be faithful to what God calls you too even though you might not necessarily see a lot of fruit. Check it out (If you get impatient, at least watch from the 6:00 mark):