The Complete Collection of the Hantlas' Bloggings

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I'm Currently Reading

Reading a book does not imply that I agree with the books, condone it, like it, or recommend it. Keep visiting the site, as I hope to publish reviews of my readings along with select quotes from each book as I finish it and digest its contents.

The Art of Manfishing

Humility: True Greatness

God Is the Gospel

Psychobabble

Deepening Your Conversation With God

Blogs I Read
Order of Newest Entry

Why I blog

I need to write. If I don’t write, I don’t think that I think--at least not thoroughly. Thus this blog is simply an outlet for me to think. My goal is to be thinking about those things and only those things that are in line with Philippians 4:8.

Glossary needed for Pyro's Debate

Jeff McFadden is right on. This would probably bring clarity to my foray into this topic.

Jeff, thanks for the link and the complement in this post as well.

Mexico Ministry

Huichols_New-believersMy mother in law, Debbie Mellberg, learned to blog and she has been posting the exciting things that God is doing in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico and among the Huichols there. Within just a few short years, the population of believers among the Huichols has gone from 4 to thousands. I have a lot to learn from these Huichol brothers and sisters who, in the midst of persecution, turned their world upside-down for Christ. I am so honored to be able to watch God work through them, and I hope that our knowledge of God and His love for all peoples will be enlarged as get to watch as spectators His sovereign hand bringing salvation to an entire tribe in the enterior of Mexico. So blogroll her blog and check back for her updates: http://mexicoministry.blogspot.com/

Go to Church for the Gospel?

Eric Costa of Reformation Theology blog points out that since the Gospel is not only what saves us but what sustains us, we should go to church every week in order that we might hear the gospel preached to us. I agree wholeheartedly with those sentiments. I want to take it one step further though. I find very little mention of motives for church "attendance" in the Bible. I do find that the Gospel must be preached. I think we need to go one step further in our understanding and motive for church "attendance" or "going to church". We when go to church, not only must the words be Gospel-centered, but our lives must demonstrate the Gospel.

If we truly believed the words that the Cross-centered preacher is preaching, then we would not be content to come, come, sit, listen, and leave. We would not be content to come, sit with our group of friends, go out to eat with our group of friends, and go on with our week, having our souls filled with the Gospel message. As a church, we must live in community and within the greater community where we are located as those who feel the weight of grace, as those who know that we have been forgiven the largest debt imaginable and given an even greater gift. If we are truly going to church to hear the gospel AND live the gospel, we won't make distinctions among ourselves, creating strata based on socioeconomic status, intelligence, or position on the ecclesiastical hierarchy. We won't squabble over worship styles or hold grudges. We will be quick to cover over sin and to gently restore those who are in sin. We will look for the poor, the outcasts of society and invite them, treat them like kings, and introduce them to the King of kings.

Gospel preaching is necessary, but it is not sufficient without every member of the church living it out among each other and out in the world. O God, I pray that you give me the faith to believe the content of the Gospel in such a way that every single action I do is done in light of that faith.

(See my message, The Gospel in Radical Hospitality, on this point)

Pleasurable Prayer

Speaking of Ben Patterson,

"I can admire a person who gets up in the early morning hours because prayer is important, but I hardly know what to make of a man who gets out of bed in the dark because the act of prayer is so pleasurable. Clearly, I have something to learn.

"In order to learn to love to pray, as opposed to loving the idea of praying, one must experience the feeling while praying that you are at the center of reality. This runs contrary to common notions—that prayer, for instance, is a retreat from the real world, that prayer is a kind of luxury that we hope someday to be able to afford"
Dr. Daniel Taylor
Deepening Your Conversation With God
Preface

Scripture: Our Only Protection

I just read a post by Mark Lauterbach at his excellent blog, GospelDrivenLife. Having heard a sermon mentioning a verse he knew well but had not read in years, he was forced to rethink his position that it is Scripture and not systematic theology that is protecting him from error. Once we "exegete a passage" we are not done with it, so we can move on. No, we are simply better able to understand it in its context the next time around. I must guard myself from the temptation to make my conclusions about Scripture the infallible truth by which I live instead of Scripture itself. One might then argue, "How can you know what Scripture says apart from your exegesis of it." I can't. I must read it (observation), I must seek to understand it, then I must make conclusions about it (or conclude that I cannot make any conclusion - interpretation), and finally I must live according to what I have been taught by the Spirit (application). However, my tendency is then to take my interpretation, and like Lauterbach says, and "read it back into Scripture." I spent two years working through the book of Galatians. My tendency, therefore, is to use my understanding of the book of Galatians to help interpret the rest of the Bible and I find application from the book in literally every facet of life. That's good. The bad is that my tendency is also to not return from the book, having been informed by new understanding of God and His Word, to further refine or even challenge my understanding of that epistle. If that happens with a New Testament book which I find myself reading often for pleasure (and because it's short), how much more for an Old Testament book that does not get near as much coverage and is harder to understand!

Another Challies giveaway

November Giveaway

Gotta Love RC's Ears: Hall of Contemporary Reformers

Check out Monergism's Hall of Contemporary Reformers. Great collection of links.

They turned me into a crossword puzzle

In 1998, I had an article written about me in the Arizona Republic regarding my comeback to football after open-heart surgery. Twentynine Palms Junior High School turned it into a reading comp assignment for their PE class. It's crazy the things you find on the internet.

I tiptoe Gingerly into Pyro's debate

PyromaniacAfter accidentally shaking up the whole blogosphere, Pyromaniac points out that he hasn't even blogged on his stance in the cessationism v continuationism debate. His blog actually does a great deal to clear the air after many of the knee-jerk responses that have flown from both sides of the debate after he mentioned it. He points out that his comments were directed toward  the "prophetic-utterances-gone-bad" group (on this point I must link to videos that I personally find very hilarious and an illustration of what can happen when prophetic utterances go bad: Robert Tilton). He even makes the point (which I think is an understatement), "I think I have much more in common with my 'Reformed non-cessationist' brethren than I have with liberal cessationists." He summarizes what he has said into four statements:

Pat Robertson's Dover Comments

PatRobertsonPat Robertson's recent comments regarding the Dover, PA vote against Intelligent Design have created a stir in the mainstream media and the blogosphere. Two of my favorite blogs, Justin Taylor's Between Two Worlds and James White's Pro Appologian, have both weighed in on it and have come down on opposite sides.

Please keep reading to get my take on it and then leave your own thoughts in the comments.

My Name is John Daker...

JohnDakerI just had to share, I think that this is one of the randomest, funniest videos I have ever seen. According this site, John Daker's performance was first seen on public access television.

Any attempt to describe the video will not do it justice. You can download the full div-x version of the broadcast here (or get all of the individual clips at getupoutmy.biz), but check out the little clip first. This goes down in my all-time favorite internet phenomena list along with Peanut Butter Jelly Time and All Your Base Are Belong to Us.

Bob Kauflin Blogging

Bob Kauflin who leads worship at the Sovereign Grace Church, Covenant Life in Gathersburg, Maryland is now blogging at WorshipMatters. No feeds coming from his site though, so I can't blogroll it. Content is great, and I'm sure it will continue to be. If adds an RSS feed and the ability to comment, it should be a very edifying blog.

Kauflin's CD, Upward: The Bob Kauflin Hymns Project, is the most listened to cd in my collection. He has truly led Sovereign Grace Ministries to crank out consistently good and God-glorifying worship songs. I'm excited about the new Worship God Live cd.

Thanks to Reformissionary for the heads-up.

Social & Economic Conservative

Probably pretty accurate:

You are a

Social Conservative
(28% permissive)

and an...

Economic Conservative
(65% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Republican




Link: The Politics Test 

"The God, Jesus Christ"

James White (read his post here), right in the middle of his very helpful historical debunking of Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code, stumbles across a very cool story of an archaeological find of a Pre-Constantine church proclaiming the deity of God with the inscription, "of the God, Jesus Christ." So Dan Brown's claims about Constantine making up the deity of Christ are done away with. And the story mentions that some believe that no churches existed prior to the 4th century. I could never do archaeology, but I'm thankful for those who do.

Myspace.com Accountable for Postings?

MySpaceAccording to this story out of San Antonio, some students' threatening posts on MySpace.com that promised "shooting and killing" at the high school caused 400 students not to show up and ended in the  arrest of the offending students, now facing felony charges. The focus of the story should be on the culpability of the students making the threats, rather the blame is placed squarely on--I find this ridiculous--MySpace.com.

Blogging and Homosexuality

I have not yet completely gathered my thoughts to the point to where I am ready for a full-fledged post regarding how insincere we are when we say "love the sinner; hate the sin" especially when it comes to homosexuality. Therefore, I will keep my comments short. Check back--probably sometime during in January when I'll have more time to write--for an expanded post. Basically, this is a challenge for myself and for all Christians to see people who's sin is of a homosexual nature as possible recipients of God's saving grace. Yes, they are enemies of God, but so was I (Rom 5:10), and I am proud of I think otherwise. I challenge us not to judge homosexuals by a standard which we would not want to be judged by ourselves. They are in sin, yes! It is a horrific sin, yes. But I am a sinner who, if the truth of my inner thoughts and desires were revealed, is far more depraved than the most hedonistic homosexual I have ever met.

Great Site for Greek Practice.

I stumbled upon Zach Hubert's, zhubert.com's Bible. It is an amazing web-based interface that really helps for those like me are still new in the Greek. It's nothing like the powerful tool of Libronix, but for me I think I will be using it often just as a handy, very smooth interface to read the Greek Bible side-by-side with the English to help me learn and cement the Greek into my memory. As you drag over each Greek word, the definition along with the a simple parsing of the grammatical function of the word. The site also has Greek flashcards for very effective vocabulary quizzing. I suspect that even with almost no Greek knowledge at all the site would still be at least slightly to refer to when the English is ambiguous on number (you plural vs you singular), gender on pronouns (what is the antecedant), and other stuff like that. Besides, this site is just plain cool and looks like tons of work. It looks like they are about to undertake the Hebrew Old Testament. Bookmark this site. Looks like they'll be turning out some very functional and easy-to-use tools.

I Found Jesus on eBay

Amusing, creative, but probably not all that effective. Selling Jesus as if he's one of many products to buy probably makes the Gospel less intelligible by a world that already sees the message of the cross as foolishness. But mostly I just thought it looked cool, so I'm posting it here:

eBayJesus


src: Flickr

Church Buying Strip Club

I just stumbled upon this AP Story in the "odd" stack entitled, "Strip Club Owner Weighs Offer from Church". I'm not sure what to think of it, but what I do know is this seems like a lucrative business model that the strip club owner has discovered: This will be the second start-up club that the church has bought. The owner is "not sure" if he will start another or not. I applaud the efforts, but perhaps this is not the most effective strip-club control methods:

My favorite software site: Journeyed.com

I always like passing on helpful information, and if you are a student or a teacher, this will most likely prove to save you significant money. JourneyEd is a site that sells student and teacher versions of popular software, many times at over 90% discount. I have personally saved hundreds of dollars from this site and as long as I am a student hope to save much more. This is will be a post you'll want to bookmark so you can get back to the site often (Support my blog by clicking the link below)

13 Year Old Nazi "Pop Stars"

PrussianBlueI saw this story on Drudge just over a week ago when ABCNews gave them PrimeTime coverage. But now PrussianBlue.net, their official webpage has hit Alexa's Mover's and Shaker's list revealing its status as one of the sites on the internet with the greatest increase in recent traffic. Their blog got taken down by hackers. This is sad and is an example of just how powerful parents' examples can be over children. These kids are parroting racist messages that they've been given by the parents. Now their message has grown to define them. This is definitely a challenge for Christian parents. To what degree do kids' "Christianity" and apparent "love for Jesus" reflect our directing their behavior and views and to what degree do they reflect an actual change in their hearts. Children's hearts are moldable, but let's make sure that we shepherd their hearts to love Christ and not simply "do the Christian thing" because their parents do.

Christians Beheaded in Indonesia

I just read this news report about the attack on four Christian women and the beheading of three of them in Indonesia. I trust that they are comforted at Jesus' side right now, but I weep with their family. How horrible it is to lose children! But to lose children to murder, and horribly grisly murders at that! Romans 12:15: "...weep with those who weep." I just did a quick A9 search and found how common this is and just wanted to honor each of these people by praying for their family and friends and praising God that he has conquered death, "Thanks be to God, who gives us victory (over death) through Jesus Christ our Lord":

Check out Voice of the Martyrs. Praise God for those who are standing firm in the midst of persecution and suffering.

Praise the Lord!

One evidence of God working "bad" for good.

Our Sinners' Song

This is one of Abraham's best songs yet because it illustrates the paradox of my praise:

Our sinners’ song we loudly raise,
But who can care for sinners’ praise?
Or hear on high what we have said?
Perhaps the same who’ll raise the dead.
Though sin still makes our song sound wrong,
Your grace will tune us soon to sing.
And sing we will, this sinners’ song:
Oh, praise to Christ—the sinners’ king!

Our sinners’ song we bring—But why?
That you would make our awful cry
As sweet as angels’ sweetest chord.
Oh, turn your ear in mercy, Lord!
Though sin still makes our song sound wrong
Your grace will tune us soon to sing.
And sing we will, this sinners’ song:
Oh, praise to Christ—the sinners’ king!

Our sinners’ song we sacrifice—
Oh, surely there’s a higher price!
No, all that you would have us do
Is sacrifice our praise to you.
Though sin still makes our song sound wrong
Your grace will tune us soon to sing.
And sing we will, this sinners’ song:
Oh, praise to Christ—the sinners’ king!

On one hand I sing praises so loudly because I am a great sinner with a great savior who saved me. Yet at the same time my sinful heart is constantly tweaking my praise to make it imperfect worship--or even worse and shamefully, self worship, for my ability to worship. Yet I can praise all that much more knowing that God's grace even adjusts my heart to give him praise, to praise not the king of perfect praisers but the King of sinners: the King of kings.

If you have not gone by CIsongs yet, please do, and put it on your blogroll so that you can be regularly lead to see the glorious God we serve through his songs.

SelfEvidentTruth.org

Baby A Great site on abortion! This is definitely a keeper. Thanks to Justin Taylor again for an excellent link. It's wonderful to see a site that's actually attempting to reach out to pregnant women in a way that won't scare them aware from the right-winged religious nuts. I'm sure that the site will get some flak from some who are "turned off" by politically correct jargon and for offering support to those who have had an abortion recently. If you are tempted to respond in a critical way of this site, shame on you. Praise the Lord that people are reaching out in effective ways to those who are faced with this difficult, life-in-the-balance decision. This is not a political issue. This is not even primarily a religious issue. Let's stop playing those games and just love and care for scared moms who are tempted by the easy fix. Support them as they choose life. Support them after they choose it...And support those who have not so that they can deal with the grief and make a better decision next time.

The answer to stop abortion is truth and love: This site offers it. The ultimate answer is truth and love, and when we show people God-glorifying truth and love in the midst of their most trying times, I trust that the truth of God's love expressed in Christ will be irresistable. I pray for more sites like this.

Hidden Treasures at Bible Church of Little Rock

MahaneyPlease surf on over to The Bible Church of Little Rock's website and get the messages by CJ & Carolyn Mahaney from their recent conference. These are true gems that you will want to listen to. Pay special attention to CJ's "Humility" message. I will soon be posting a review of his book, which has been one of the best and most challenging books I've ever read.

Thanks to Justin Taylor for the heads-up.

MVT: One of the Most Valuable Tools as I Read and Work

I know it's weird to be reviewing some highlighters, but here I go. These highlighters are among my most used items I own. The quality of the highlighter is excellent, neither too dark or too light. It is generally not visible through pages unless you let the pen sit for a long time on the page. It goes on smoothly. But I would not write a review of a highlighter if all it was was a good highlighter. What these things have going for them is that they have the Post-It tabs built in (and refills come with). So as you highlight and take notes, you can easily flag that page for followup later on.

When I read, I highlight on and write all over my pages and oftentimes I think, "When I finish reading, I want to write about what I just read," or, "I want to copy down that quote." Now I can easily flag that page and come back to it when I'm done. No more dog-eared pages.

I work as a Realtor as well and I often go out into the field with a client with a binder filled with 200+ listings. As we sit down, we highlight important information and note what properties we want to go see. So rather than flipping through the binder to find the properties we marked or rather than taking the pages out of the binder, we can simply flag them. That way, the binder stays intact and organized.

It's odd but true, One of my most useful and efficiency-promoting pieces of property is so simple and so inexpensive.

What Jacob Needs

On a fun and random note, I got this idea from the Jollyblogger who got it from Jared at Thinklings, who got it from Marla at Always Thirsty, who got it from Keer unplugged who apparently got it from PrincessRuby; I couldn't find the PrincessRuby entry on this so my citation chain ends there. Type "[your name] needs" (in quotes) into Google. For example, I typed "Jacob Needs". Then you quote what phrases are found. They're pretty funny and suprisingly accurate (don't read into that too much. Try it:

  1. Jacob needs to be able to discern what deserves focus (like probably not making a blogpost like this one)
  2. Jacob needs heart and a competitive edge
  3. Jacob needs a program to be in for next year and maybe even the summer.
  4. Jacob needs hand over hand assistance to eat and drink (no disagreement there)
  5. Jacob needs a fight.
  6. Jacob needs to find a way to fight the demons of his past so he can cross the river into the land that holds so much promise (Not sure what that means).
  7. The last thing Jacob needs is to exchange girl trouble for woman trouble (I'm not sure what this means either but it's probably true)
  8. Jacob needs a home
  9. Jacob needs to go forward, to head toward the Promised land (Phil 3:14 [shrug]).
  10. Jacob needs an adoptive family who can provide the stability and structure he needs while patiently meeting his emotional and developmental needs (:-)).

Clichéd Christianity

I just read Tim Challies' very good post on our (meaning Christians in general) contentment with the comfortable, the overused, the trite, and the unhelpful. As our world faces huge disasters everyday on one hand and monotonous pointlessness on the other, we need answers for life that go much deeper than simply spouting off a phrase that we read or heard or think sounds profound. We need truth and we need to humbly wrestle with misery and mystery.

This weight is resting very heavily upon my heart tonight. I just returned from an anxiety support group which was being held at a local church here in Chandler, AZ. My obligatory attendance was based on a nursing school assignment. The group purported to be Christian, but the answers given for dealing with anxiety were no better than the worlds, no they were the world's: Deep breath, relax, distract yourself, and trust in your Higher Power. Suffering people were drawn to this group which claimed it would provide solutions and answers to their overwhelming anxiety with the world. My mention of Philippians 4:6-7 and the insinuation (based on Christ in the boat with the disciples asking "Where is your faith?") that extreme anxiety may be sin for which the solution would be repentance was met with blank stares and a change of subject. The claim that prayer, thanking God, trusting God, and casting our cares upon God was assumed to be nothing more than just another "coping mechanism" similar to cathartic conversation, positive self-talk, and distraction. My God is just as good as your God and it doesn't matter what we believe about Him, just as long as He (or She) helps you feel better about yourself and be less stressed. I was struck with the glaring and painful truth that this is the message of much of Christiandom and the message that I think gets through to peoples ears when we use terms that have been robbed and clichéd by "Evangelicalism".

Nothing to Say Apart from the Bible

This quote is not from a book but from one of my favorite blogs. It is from a post reflecting on the DesiringGod conference on suffering describing the preaching of John Piper. The reason I cited this quote is because I want to come back to this before each message that I preach, each small group that I lead, each person I counsel, and even every thought that I think:

When Piper preaches he seems to do little more than bridge one Bible verse to the next, building to a deeply biblical conclusion. With some preachers you begin to feel that they could get along just fine without the Bible, but with Piper you feel that if he didn't have the Bible he'd have nothing to say.
Tim Challies
"Reflections on the DesiringGod Conference"
2005 DesiringGod Conference: Suffering and teh Sovereignty of God

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