Who among us is desperate enough to ask God for personal revival and then desperate enough to do what He asks?

Simple Saturdays – A Father’s Perspective

Cello music
Laundry piles
“Clean out the fridge” lunch
Sermon prep and finalization
Cartoons (albeit on DVR)
Boxes to the dump
Walmart run
Gas up my car for Sunday commute
Breakfast by Allison
Quicken appointment
Occasional nap(s)
Extra praying
Extra praying that leads to unintentional nap
Weekly review and planning
Time to talk to my kids and wife

These days are ending as Allison becomes a teen, but today is still one of those Saturdays that I love.

When I am overwhelmed, I will trust in you.

 We Languish for Men

 Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.
 —Acts 21:13

The Church at this moment needs men, the right kind of men—bold men.…
We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul, who cannot be frightened by threats of death because they have already died to the allurements of this world. Such men will be free from the compulsions that control weaker men. They will not be forced to do things by the squeeze of circumstances; their only compulsion will come from within—or from above.
This kind of freedom is necessary if we are to have prophets in our pulpits again instead of mascots. These free men will serve God and mankind from motives too high to be understood by the rank and file of religious retainers who today shuttle in and out of the sanctuary. They will make no decisions out of fear, take no course out of a desire to please, accept no service for financial considerations, perform no religious act out of mere custom; nor will they allow themselves to be influenced by the love of publicity or the desire for reputation.

A. W. Tozer, Tozer on Christian Leadership : A 366-day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA.: WingSpread, 2001).

The experiences of men who walked with God in olden times agree to teach that the Lord cannot fully bless a man until He has first conquered him. The degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completeness of God’s victory over him.…
We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does, we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration.… Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance. Then He invades our natures with that ancient and eternal life which is from the beginning. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself. POM045–046, 050

    Lord, indeed invade and conquer my heart today. Bring me to my knees in complete surrender; break me; shatter my strength and wipe out my resistance. Invade my nature today and conquer me for Your glory. Amen.

A. W. Tozer, Tozer on Christian Leadership : A 366-day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA.: WingSpread, 2001).

Greatness Has Its Price
“For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.”  —1 Thessalonians 2:9

The laws of success operate also in the higher field of the soul—spiritual greatness has its price. Eminence in the things of the Spirit demands a devotion to these things more complete than most of us are willing to give. But the law cannot be escaped. If we would be holy we know the way; the law of holy living is before us. The prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New and, more than all, the sublime teachings of Christ are there to tell us how to succeed.…
The amount of loafing practiced by the average Christian in spiritual things would ruin a concert pianist if he allowed himself to do the same thing in the field of music. The idle puttering around that we see in church circles would end the career of a big league pitcher in one week. No scientist could solve his exacting problem if he took as little interest in it as the rank and file of Christians take in the art of being holy. The nation whose soldiers were as soft and undisciplined as the soldiers of the churches would be conquered by the first enemy that attacked it. Triumphs are not won by men in easy chairs. Success is costly.

A. W. Tozer, Tozer on Christian Leadership : A 366-day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA.: WingSpread, 2001).

Greatness Has Its Price
“For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.”  —1 Thessalonians 2:9

The laws of success operate also in the higher field of the soul—spiritual greatness has its price. Eminence in the things of the Spirit demands a devotion to these things more complete than most of us are willing to give. But the law cannot be escaped. If we would be holy we know the way; the law of holy living is before us. The prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New and, more than all, the sublime teachings of Christ are there to tell us how to succeed.…
The amount of loafing practiced by the average Christian in spiritual things would ruin a concert pianist if he allowed himself to do the same thing in the field of music. The idle puttering around that we see in church circles would end the career of a big league pitcher in one week. No scientist could solve his exacting problem if he took as little interest in it as the rank and file of Christians take in the art of being holy. The nation whose soldiers were as soft and undisciplined as the soldiers of the churches would be conquered by the first enemy that attacked it. Triumphs are not won by men in easy chairs. Success is costly.

A. W. Tozer, Tozer on Christian Leadership : A 366-day Devotional (Camp Hill, PA.: WingSpread, 2001).

13 Things Your Greek Teachers Won’t Tell You via www.daveblackonline.com/blog.htm

12:20
PM
The latest issue of The Reader’s Digest has an interesting
article entitled “13 Things Used Car Salesmen Won’t Tell You.” Here are
“13 Things Your Greek Teachers Won’t Tell You”:

1. Greek is not the only tool you
need to interpret your New Testament. In fact, it’s only one component
in a panoply of a myriad of tools. Get Greek, but don’t stop there.
(You’ll need, for example, a Hebrew New Testament as well.)

2. Greek is not the Open Sesame of
biblical interpretation. All it does is limit your options. It tells you
what’s possible, then the context and other factors kick in to
disambiguate the text.

3. Greek is not superior to other
languages in the world. Don’t believe it when you are told that Greek is
more logical than, say, Hebrew. Not true.

4. Greek did not have to be the
language in which God inscripturated New Testament truth because of its
complicated syntax. Truth be told, there’s only one reason why the New
Testament was written in Greek and not in another language (say, Latin),
and that is a man named Alexander the Great, whose vision was to conquer
the inhabited world and then unite it through a process known as
Hellenization. To a large degree he succeeded, and therefore the use of
Greek as the common lingua franca throughout the Mediterranean world in
the first century AD should come as no surprise to us today. I emphasize
this point only because there are some today who would seek to resurrect
the notion of “Holy Ghost” Greek. Their view is, in my view, a
demonstrable cul-de-sac.

5. Greek words do not have one
meaning. Yet how many times do we hear in a sermon, “The word in the
Greek means…”? Most Greek words are polysemous, that is, they have
many possible meanings, only one of which is its semantic contribution
to any passage in which it occurs. (In case you were wondering: Reading
all of the meanings of a Greek word into any particular passage in which
it occurs is called “illegitimate totality transfer” by linguists.)

6. Greek is not difficult to learn.
I’ll say it again: Greek is not difficult to learn. I like to
tell my students, “Greek is an easy language; it’s us Greek teachers who
get in the way.” The point is that anyone can learn Greek, even a
poorly-educated surfer from Hawaii. If I can master Greek, anyone can!

7. Greek can be acquired through any
number of means, including most beginning textbooks. Yes, I prefer to
use my own

Learn to Read New Testament Greek in my
classes, but mine is not the only good textbook out there. When I was in
California I taught in an institution that required all of its Greek
teachers to use the same textbook for beginning Greek. I adamantly
opposed that policy. I feel very strongly that teachers should have the
right to use whichever textbook they prefer. Thankfully, the year I left
California to move to North Carolina that policy was reversed, and now
teachers can select their own beginning grammars. (By the way, the
textbook that had been required was mine!)

8. Greek students think they can get
away with falling behind in their studies. Folks, you can’t. I tell my
students that it’s almost impossible to catch up if you get behind even
one chapter in our textbook. Language study requires discipline and time
management skills perhaps more than any other course of study in school.

9. Greek is fun! At least when it’s
taught in a fun way.

10. Greek is good for more than word
studies. In fact, in the past few years I’ve embarked on a crusade to
get my students to move away from word-bound exegesis. When I was in
seminary I was taught little more than how to do word studies from the
Greek. Hence, I thought I had “used Greek in ministry” if I had
consulted my Wuest, Robertson, Kittle, Brown, Vincent, or Vines. Since
then I’ve discovered that lexical analysis is the handmaiden and not the
queen of New Testament exegesis. Greek enables us to see how a text is
structured, how it includes rhetorical devices, how syntactical
constructions are often hermeneutical keys, etc.

11. Greek can cause you to lose your
faith. It happened to one famous New Testament professor in the US when
he discovered that there were textual variants in his Greek New
Testament, and it can happen to you. When the text of Scripture becomes
nothing more than “another analyzable datum of linguistic
interpretation” then it loses its power as the Word of God. That’s why
I’m so excited about my Greek students at the seminary, most of whom are
eager to place their considerable learning at the feet of Jesus in
humble service to His upside-down kingdom.

12. Greek can be learned in an
informal setting. The truth is that you do not need to take a formal
class in this subject or in any subject for that matter. I know
gobs of homeschoolers who are using my grammar in self-study, many of
whom are also using my

Greek DVDs in the process. If anyone
wants to join the club, let me know and I will send you, gratis, a
pronunciation CD and a handout called “Additional Exercises.”

13. Greek is not Greek. In other
words, Modern Greek and Koine Greek are two quite different languages.
So don’t expect to be able to order a burrito in Athens just because
you’ve had me for first year Greek. On the other hand, once you have
mastered Koine Greek it is fairly easy to work backwards (and learn
Classical Greek) and forwards (and learn Modern Greek).

Okay, I’m done. And yes, I’m
exaggerating. Many Greek teachers do in fact tell their students
these things. May their tribe increase!

Now who wants to tackle “13
Things Your Hebrew Teachers Won’t Tell You”?

I set out to determine if purchasing an Ipad for use in a college classroom would have benefits over a regular notebook computer. The one major hangup everyone from the “fanboys” to the Mac newbies has is in the area of presentations / powerpoint usage. (Edit: This is not a problem for Mac to Mac)

The complaints range from weirdness with Keynote importing to lack of fonts to “deletion of speaker notes” under certain circumstances. It does seem to work fabulous via gmote or another app if you want to use your Ipad as the remote presenter and your Macbook is hooked up to the projector with your presentation on it. That is not an option for me. (See this article for a balanced look at these limitations http://theappleblog.com/

Also, I have a lot of very nice Koine or Biblical Greek powerpoint presentations. Not being able to use them due to font incompatibilities is a deal-breaker for me.

How and Why to Jailbreak Your Ipad (College related)
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Confessions-of-an-iPad/25387/
Also, you will need a copy of something like Winscp available at http://winscp.net to connect to your Ipad once you have opened or performed the jailbreak.

Adding Fonts for Your Presentation
http://blog.gauravgiri.com/
http://blog.gauravgiri.com/2008/08/tutorial-adding-extra-fonts-to-iphone/

Ipad Specific Instructions
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=911039

Plist Editor for Windows
http://www.filetransit.com/download.php?id=77101
www.ipodrobot.com
http://www.icopybot.com/blog/free-plist-editor-for-windows-10-released.htm

Being a great mobile browser, email beast, Kindle replacement, app machine, etc. are great reasons for buying and keeping an Ipad. However, I need to justify the cost as it will help me to not lug around a notebook computer for 15 hours of teaching a week. So, for right now I will wait until the Ipad is more user-friendly for what I need it to do.