Lord of the harvest…………….

I forgot how much work it takes to raise a child from infancy.  I have been staying up all night since I came back from China so that Esther can get a break from the night feedings.  I’m not fully over the jet lag so my sleeping habits are all messed up right now anyways.  I’ve already gone through this with three other kids so I thought this would be a lot easier but now I’m remembering how difficult it was for all three of them.  But as I look at each one of my kids I would do it a hundred times all over again for each one of my kids if they need it.

Berean is my spiritual child.  I wouldn’t trade it for the world. ( I really mean that)  But there are other children that are growing on the other side of the ocean.  I can’t seem to get them out of my mind…not that I’ve been trying.  I have one family but two homes.

Lord…I beseech you…send out more workers into your harvest………….

Back from Asia

It’s 4:11a.m. To have a clear purpose in life is one of the rewards of following Christ. His mission was clear so everything in His life had a definite goal. To be able to wake up everyday knowing exactly what you were supposed to do for that day is a great feeling. That’s exactly how it is during these summer trips. No matter how tiring and laborious the day’s task may be, the thought of doing something meaningful that day really makes each day worth living. Although I am a pastor sometimes I’m not sure if my purpose is really clear. I wrestle each day as to how to prioritize my time. I struggle to divide my time between family and church. I wrestle with where I should be devoting my time even in ministry. These things may never fully be resolved but I wish they would sometimes. To live with a clear mission…………that is my prayer.

Jesus in China

Click here to see.

Pray for our summer team leaving tonight!

Galatians Wordle

[Click to enlarge]

What’s a wordle? A wordle is a graphic representation of a body of text. The words that appear more frequently are given a larger size, while the words that are less frequent are smaller. This is a good, visual way to chart out and evaluate how certain words are given more prominence in any given text.

The above picture is a wordle of the book of Galatians. I’d thought it would be fun and appropriate to post since P. Peter has been going over a series in Galatians for the past month.

Now my good sense tells me that it would be an exegetical fallacy of some kind to automatically attach greater significance to words that are used more frequently. The frequency of a word doesn’t necessarily directly correspond to importance. In fact, a writer may deliberately choose to use a word less frequently to create a deeper impression upon its usage.

Now that being said, one must remember that a conventional method employed by biblical writers for emphasis is repetition. Therefore, it’s a common hermeneutical principle to be attentive to words that appear more often than others in a given passage or book of Scripture.

In the end, use discretion and evaluate accordingly; take for it what you will but obviously, the prominence of Christ in Galatians is not to be ignored. =)

Good-o-Meter

A little cheezy, a little fun, but it gets the point across.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Meet Our Retreat Speaker: Pastor Paul Kim

Family: wife, Linda; son Micah (7); Kylie (2); and baby boy (due July 9,2008)!

Pastor Paul and Linda have been married for 10 years. They met during their time together at UC Berkeley where they both graduated. Today, Linda is working as a preschool teacher.

P. Paul is the original church planter and lead pastor for Harbor Presbyterian Church in Carmel Valley and Carlsbad.  HPC is a multiethnic, multi-site church in the greater San Diego region.

He graduated from UC Berkeley with a history degree, and received his Master of Divinity from the Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California. Prior to Harbor, P. Paul served as college pastor of Cerritos Presbyterian Church, as well as the youth and college pastor of KCPC in San Francisco.

Among his many hobbies, Pastor Paul is an avid Lakers, Padres, and Chargers fan. He frequents Mexican restaurants and loves reading pretty much any subject (theology, history, fiction, non fiction, etc). He also loves spending time with his kids and family, going to the beach, firing up his Nintendo Wii and rocking out to Guitar Hero.

Please pray for Pastor Paul as he will speak from God’s Word, teaching us on the the topic of The Christ-Centered Life. Please also pray that our retreat next month will be a fruitful and enriching time of instruction and fellowship for our church body!

The Excellent Christ

Once…in 1737…I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension…The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception…which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears, weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust; and to be full of Christ alone’ to love him with a holy and pure love; to trust in him; to live upon him; to serve and follow him; and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity.

The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1995 [1834]), xlvii