Please read the announcement here: http://day3.co.uk/2010/09/02/server-upgrade-friday-september-3rd-2010/

Thank you.

To celebrate, I’m taking my wife away to Denver, Colorado (thanks to Hilton Hhonors hotel points).

We’re going to be away for four nights, which will be the longest we’ve been away from our kids since we had our first almost eight years ago.

This is also going to be our first time away from them for more than a night since in three years.

I am SO looking forward to it!

Anyway, we’ve never been to Denver before and I’ve been researching things to do there and have a long list of possible activities but I was wondering, anyone who has ever been there, what you would recommend we should do or see while we are there. Are there any places we simply MUST visit? Restaurants we should walk past and wish we had the money to eat at?

What are your recommendations for things to do in Denver while you’re alive?

The home came with a builder’s warranty, which warranted it against defects in construction for something like 10 years.

Some time after he bought the home, he was feeling a little flush with cash so he went out to his local electronics store to buy a new flat-screen TV, surround sound system and all the appropriate DVD players and TV decoders.

When he came to check out at the store, he had to give his address to the clerk at which point the clerk became a little sheepish and said,  ”I’m sorry, I can’t sell you the brand of TV you selected.”

“Why ever not?”, my friend asked.

“Well, it’s where you live. You see, the people who built your house don’t allow you to have any equipment built by that manufacturer in your home.”

“That’s ridiculous!”, my irate friend replied. “They can’t dictate what I can and can’t use in my own home!”

“Well, actually, they can. You see, it was in your purchase contract…. You can get around it though, if you sign this form saying that you understand that using this equipment will void your home warranty then I can sell you your electronics today,”

“What do you mean, it voids my warranty? What does my choice of TV have to do with whether or not they used the right lumber to build the place or whether or not they hammered enough nails in as they were putting it together?”

“Umm… I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but those are the rules. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m sorry.” The salesman sheepishly replied.

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Of course, this story isn’t true. I don’t have any friends who have purchased brand new homes… but it does highlight something that IS true.

I have an Apple iPhone 4. I paid good money for this wonderful piece of hardware and yet Apple dictate what programs I can run on it and which ones I can’t.

If I try to run programs that Apple don’t approve of, I’m allowed to do so according to the US Copyright Office but it will invalidate my warranty.

Yes, you read that right. If Apple have made my phone with a defective case which will fall apart 12 days after it was manufactured then running a game that Apple don’t approve of on my phone means that they will no longer fix it, even though it’s a hardware manufacturing defect not a software issue.

I don’t get it.

I am actually very happy with my iPhone and have no desire to ‘jailbreak’ it so this won’t actually affect me but the principle is still there.

Could this happen in any other industry?

Could your car manufacturer refuse to fix a drive-train that is under warranty just because you put pink floor mats down on the floor of the car?

Could your TV manufacturer refuse to fix your faulty TV because you watched “I Love Lucy” reruns?

No. They couldn’t.

So why can Apple (and other phone manufacturers) get away with it?

Today, I have the honor of writing for Michael Perkins over on his blog.

Head on over there to see what I have learned about customer service and how we can apply it as the Church: Customer Service is an Art Form

Now aged 103, Miss Clark is likely a billionaire – although no-one outside of her very, very small circle of friends knows for sure. Her father was Senator William A. Clark, a self-made millionaire who became possibly the second richest man in America and who died in 1925, aged 86. Miss Clark eventually inherited much of his fortune, it seems, but slipped quietly out of the public eye in the 1930’s and has not been seen or heard from much ever since.

What is known is that she owns an 15,000 sqft apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City, worth $100 million which she has only been to a few times in the last thirty years, a country estate in Santa Barbara, CA also worth at least $100 million, which has been empty since 1963 and a 52 acre estate with a 12,776 sqft house in New Caanan, CT which she purchased in 1952 and has never even spent a night in.

It is believed she is now living in  a’drab’ hospital but only her lawyer seems to know for sure and he’s not giving anything away.

The story fascinated me because of the vast wealth she was given and the way she seems to have pretty much ignored it for the last fifty years.

It seems a terrible waste. There is so much good that she could do with all that money, land and power but she chooses to just ignore it.

As I was thinking about that, I realised that I too have been given great wealth, greater even than Miss Clark received – and I ignore it most of the time too.

I’ve been given the gift of eternal life, of freedom from sin and bondage, of victory over death and the grave, of a on-on-one relationship with the creator of the universe and what do I do with it?

I throw up a quick prayer every night, read my bible (occasionally) talk about spiritual stuff when people push me into it and maybe attend a church service every Sunday.

Gee, that’s a good use of the greatest gift ever given.

Not.

What also caught my attention was the fact that Huguette Clarke has been paying for maintenance and staff on all of her properties. They are all, apparently, in immaculate condition, looking as if the owners had just gone away for the weekend. They’re clean and pretty with perfectly manicured lawns and well kept flower beds. They look perfect – but they’re unused.

How much am I like that? I keep everything looking nice but in reality is it all just an empty facade? Do I tend to the gardens, clean the windows and sweep the floors but never allow anyone in, never share what I have?

Do I just ignore my wealth.

… and while we’re on the subject, do you?

Check out yesterday’s post for part one and to learn a little about who Gabe is but in short, he’s a web designer, creative genius, husband, father and photographer who manages to be a man of God in all of those things.

Here’s Part Two of his interview:

Gabe, you’ve started a project called Digital Disciples, which takes up some of your time but you don’t get paid for it. Tell me, Why do you do that? Why do stuff you’re not getting paid for when extra income would really help a lot?

Like I said earlier, to me the mark of a person is what they do when they’re not getting paid or during work hours. Even if you’re working for a church or a ministry organization. To me true church happens Monday through Saturday. God’s really shown me that this world is not about me or you, it’s about us. Digital Disciples is a network where individual people get to realize that. They can be extremely talented, even earning a nice paycheck, but I think the most value we can get from this life is by investing time into the lives of others. That’s something that can happen everywhere and in every industry.

Isn’t it ironic that most people that hang out online are introverts and don’t know how to respond when placed in a group offline? God has called me to engage and share after hearing / seeing stories of how the youth of this world are becoming less social. Our faith should lead to a life in community, not of isolation and depression. It’s time to wake up.

Last year you visited 52 zoos in 52 weeks. That seems like a very odd thing for a Christian family with little disposable income to do. What was that all about?

I actually just tweeted about this today. I’ve become so annoyed with all of the focus on leadership (even within the church) these days. And it’s not just one person out there doing all of this kind of teaching. There’s not enough people talking about community, that’s for sure! Driving the 22,000 miles and connecting with all of those people showed me just how much God can use technology these days. God wasn’t joking about Matthew 7:7. He will blow you away by making a wish of yours come true. Marla came to me one day after God gave her the direction. Some husbands would think their wife was crazy, but I’m glad that it’s God that I know is crazy and He’s just infected her with His love for the world.

We definitely didn’t fund the whole tour. God’s timing with the projects I was working on, holidays, the prices of gas dropping, and people opening up their homes to us are a few of the things that funded the trips. Looking back on it, we could have saved up for years to try to make it happen, or God could have blown us away by His provision. Honestly, how can a family of five actually make something like that happen in one year if they tried their hardest?

We didn’t have the finances to fly out to California for our last leg of the tour, but yet God tapped the Associated Press on the shoulder which led to The Early Show flying us all into New York City to be on the show. The day that happened, I can’t tell you how awesome it was to let the girls know that God just answered their request of wanting to fly. Or of blessing them for all of the riding they did!

I wish I could meet up with you guys and interview you face to face. There’s so much I’d like to ask, so much I think you could say to help my readers become more effective in their walk with Christ. Unfortunately, that’s not possible right now. But in closing, tell me, what keeps you both going? It seems like you must be very specially gifted to be able to live the way you do and give as generously as you do. Has God given you some special gift or ability which most of us don’t have. How do you keep focused on him in the midst of struggle and adversity?

We’d love to meet you sometime, Peter! As much as we’ve been invited into the lives and homes of others, know that you’re invited into ours if you would ever want to stop by.

Regarding what keeps us both going and focused. I think God’s shown us that it’s not about next year. It’s about today, and He has every intention of being glorified and at work today. The times, ways and places God has shown Himself to us are unique. He has those same events planned in all of our lives. What seems to work for me, even though it probably seems ridiculous, is living knowing that God holds the daily planner. Letting Him step in and ask you to coach your daughter’s soccer team is part of His mission. A lunch meeting is part of his plan.

When we stop pushing things into His plan I believe we start to see more clearly that this is His world, and bet my life that He knows what He’s doing with it. As someone who enjoys photography, I guess it’s putting the focus more on Him than on myself. Life is the lens God has given us. How many pictures of ourselves looking good are we going to take until we see what life could be like if God were seen clearly through our lives?

__________________________________

Thank you, Gabe for taking part in this series. I really appreciate you both taking the time to answer my questions. I so wish that we could have shared more of your experiences and what God has taught you over the past decade.

__________________________________

If you’d like to hear more from Gabe, then head on over to gabetaviano.com and see what he has to share. Also, stop by Taviano.com to see all the websites that Gabe and Marla run.

Gabe Taviano is husband to Marla, who I interviewed last week and is an incredibly creative guy who manages to mix business with faith in a way that I would love to be able to emulate.

If you’ve never met Gabe, he’s a website designer, tech guru, Apple aficionado, Kingdom Technologist (yes, I did just make that term up) and all round nice guy. Oh, and he’s pretty awesome with a camera too.

Last week, Marla answered a set of questions and this week Gabe has answered an identical set of questions (all but one are identical, at least).

What really excited me about this is that this is a family who really live by faith in a way that most of us can’t even imagine and with these two interviews, we get both the husband’s and the wife’s perspective on how it works and what God is doing. If you didn’t read Marla’s interview answers you should check them out to get an amazing additional perspective.

The Interview

Gabe, you guys amaze me with the way you walk out your faith. Finding time and ways to share our faith and minister for Christ is something many of us have great difficulty with. What would be your advice to people wanting to become more effective in their Christian walks?

First of all, thanks for inviting me here Peter! Whenever I talk to someone about serving God, I always share that God doesn’t work on a title / status basis. His work is in the heart business. I think we’re the ones who have it all wrong when we think that preachers / speakers have been given more authority to share or lead. I would say that 1 Peter 2:9 makes that clear! Regarding the work we do, we’ve actually been in a position (although for only a few years) where we were supported by over 30 families and a few churches. That then led us to four years where we were both doing work we love from home before I joined the management team of a Christian radio station here in Columbus, OH.

What I think sets someone apart from the pew-sitter is what they give God outside of work as well. Everybody isn’t called into what the church likes to call missions work. But everybody is called to live an Exodus 20:3 and 1 Corinthians 10:31 life.

I think for most people who read your blogs the hardest thing to understand would be your attitude toward money. Most of us spend the majority of our lives working for (and coming up with new ways to spend) money. You seem to mostly rely on God for your income though. Those who read your blog will probably know that your dishwasher broke down almost two years ago but living your lives by faith like you do means you haven’t been able to afford to fix it. Is it hard to live that way?

Every time I’ve read Mark 10:17-25 I am reminded that it’s not about money. God blesses us and most of the time we don’t realize it. What is really confusing to me is when I see people trying to live like that’s not true, when they know that’s how God works. There are many things that God will ask you to do if you are following him that require money not to be the first part of the equation to success. The same people that don’t get that equation are more than likely the same people that don’t take steps of humility and serve people that they might consider “less important” than them.

Here’s something I’ve learned from a pastor friend of mine. God chases us, even during times when we abuse free will and run away from Him. I’ve even disagreed with Dave Ramsey’s teachings of building wealth / savings a few times. Some of those teachings lead us into places of building up enough money to be able to save enough to cover our own rears. Sure, getting out of debt and saving money is a pretty smart thing to do. But should that rule our life or dictate what we’re willing to do for the Lord. I believe that happens sometimes. Christians treat their financial stability often better than their spiritual health. How does that kind of teaching apply to someone who doesn’t have that much? The person that needs to understand that when they turn around after a failure, God is right there waiting on them. Our trip to Cambodia just threw all of that in my face at a level I haven’t experienced before. Our definition of wealth is so subjective, while God explains it pretty well.

Marla writes and speaks and Gabe, you design websites. Those are both occupations which don’t guarantee an income. You have three daughters to look after, do you ever get people telling you you should get ‘real’ jobs so you can support your family?

God’s really pushing me (us both) hard at the moment, while still asking us to be the parents He wants us to be to our three girls. I have the “hard-to-say-no-to-people” disease. That mixed with the fact that God has a desire to speak through the web / technology are making life a bit more full than I would prefer. I accepted the position here at the radio station because I saw a big need for improvement and opportunity to truly impact a multitude of lives (as a team). I thought the freelance projects would go away and life might be more comfortable. You can ask Marla, that’s definitely not the case. Sure, I’ve been blessed to not have to advertise, but I’m also not insane or would tell people that God doesn’t use advertising to spread His truth. I do believe that God will take care of you no matter what situation you or your organization are in.. If your heart is right.

To be continued tomorrow…

I know, totally random, but that’s just me… and maybe I was out in the sun too long.

Anyway, here are the top five most inappropriate wedding songs that i could think of in ten minutes. What would you add to the list?

1. It Must Have Been Love (but it’s over now) – by Roxette
2. Here I Go Again on My Own – by Whitesnake
3. I Hate Everything About You – by Ugly Kid Joe
4. Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now – by The Smiths
5. And finally, the granddaddy of them all: I Used To Love Her (but I had to kill her) – by Guns ‘n’ Roses

What would you add?

I was really quite hesitant about buying it in the first place, I have never really liked using my friend’s iPod touch’s or iPhones but there were some distinct advantages for me in getting an internet connected phone and the iPhone seemed to offer the most advantages.

There are things I love about it and things I don’t like too much – but most of the things I don’t like are not because they’re necessarily bad but just different from what I’m used to.

What I Love:

• I LOVE using Pandora (the self-generated radio app) on it. I connect the phone to my home wifi connection and when I go out for a walk listening to Pandora, there is never any noticeable switch between the phone using my wifi and switching to cellular data. It’s really quite seamless. I’m impressed with it every time.
• I LOVE playing Words With Friends against my friends, family and some total strangers. WWF was one of the big selling points for me when picking the phone.
• I LOVE the quality of the camera. Just to show you what it’s like, I took some video of our local fourth of July fireworks show. Check it out here: iPhone4 Fireworks!
• I LOVE video chatting with friends… oh, wait, I don’t know anyone who owns one so I can’t do that yet.
• I LOVE visual voicemail. It totally rocks!

and that’s about it.

Here’s what I DON’T love about it though.

• I don’t love the ‘multitasking’. But that’s mainly because most of the apps I use don’t yet support multi-taking.
• I don’t love the way the interface works, the way you navigate.
• I don’t love not having a ‘right click’ mouse button.
• I don’t love how it manages to slide off of even seemingly flat surfaces.

What I’ve noticed though, if I’m really honest is that the things I don’t love are not necessarily BAD, they’re just different.

I’m so used to Microsoft products and the way they work that I’m pretty much programmed to think that anything different is bad.

At first I was convinced that the way you navigated from one app to another on the iPhone was a much worse system than how it’s done on Windows phones… but now, as I’m getting more and more comfortable with my iPhone and am getting used to how the operating system works, it’s not all that bad at all.

Makes me wonder what else in life I dismiss as bad just because  it’s different than what I’m used to?

Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

Etc….

(By Horatio Spafford)

I was listening to this song the other day and began to wonder how I would explain it to someone who doesn’t know Christ.

What does “It is well with my soul” even mean?

As I pondered this, a picture came to mind of Jesus asleep on a ship. This was just an ordinary ship but the situation was far from ordinary. You see, there was a furious storm which was threatening to swamp the ship and maybe even sink it.

The sailors, who just happened to be Jesus’ disciples were terrified, the waves were crashing around them, the storm was raging and there seemed to be no escape.

Yet in the middle of it all, on board that doomed vessel, a man was calmly sleeping.

As unbelievable as it may sound, there was an area of peace and stillness right there in the thick of the problems.

The disciples came to Jesus and woke him and with a word, he calmed the wind and waves and the disciples were amazed (Luke 8:22-25).

Where is the link between “It is well with my soul” and this story of Jesus calmly sleeping?

Well, it’s this: Many times in life, problems and troubles around us threaten to overcome us. The storms rage, the world seems to be collapsing before our eyes and disaster seems immanent but somewhere inside of us, when we have Jesus in our lives, there is an area of calm, of peace, of comfort – it’s the place where Jesus dwells within us.

Having that area of peace tells us one thing. No matter what may happen, no matter how hard the trials may get, we have an assurance, a promise which cannot be broken, that our future is secure.

I can say at all times that “It is well with my soul” because although at times it may seem like I’m like that boat in the storm about to get swamped, Jesus is there, not sleeping as he was then, but rather bringing that inner peace which cannot be understood without knowing him.

I’m going through my own trials right now and there are days when I feel like it’s all going to overwhelm me, yet there has never been a day when I could not sing that song with conviction because Jesus was bringing his peace and calm to my soul.

It is well, it is well with my soul!