Well, I’m back from West Virginia. Had a nice couple of days there. Max and I had a good time together. He listened to The Magic Tree House, Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), Geronimo Stilton and Stink (Junie B. Jones little brother) on his I-Pod. Apparently he spent most of his time with The Magic Tree House because the trip was peppered with little gems of real wisdom and knowledge that he was learning . . . like the definition of patriots, how firemen tried to stop the great San Francisco fire after the 1906 earthquake and how the Titanic sank.
For my part, I spent some time worshiping and listening to some sermons by John Weece (Southland Christian Church in Lexington) and Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill Church in Seattle). Boy, Driscoll preaches for a long time . . . usually talking for anywhere from 50 minutes to an hour and fifteen minutes.
On Friday morning I got up early and went to Pipestem State Park and hiked a ways into the woods where I read and chanted several Psalms out loud and dug into a full reading of the Gospel of Matthew. Later in the day Max and I went and walked around Sandstone Falls and then grabbed some hot dogs at the Dairy Queen in Hinton, WV – undoubtedly the world’s best chili and slaw dogs!
I slaved a way for a good part of Friday on tomorrow’ sermon; the second in a series on joy. Let me tell you, I really struggled with the passage (John 16.16-24). I am praying that God will use my study and my work tomorrow morning to do what he wants to do with it. I began to wonder if some of my difficulty with the passage arose from just how much the enemy does not want his people to ask for Kingdom things in Jesus’ name. Afterall, Jesus promises that if we pray for kingdom things in Jesus’ name, God will give us what we asked for. Pretty awesome! All the way home, I found myself praying for things in Jesus’ name. I’ve always done this, but after working on the passage all week I think I had a deeper understanding of why I was praying in Jesus’ name.
BTW – Mark Driscoll’s sermon on the cross – from his Doctrine Series – was fabulous . . . go to I-Tunes or the Mars Hill website and give it a listen (or a view).
I just heard from my mom. Max is still with them and he had a great time at the Virginia Tech scrimmage game and a lot of the players signed his football and his baseball cap.
