Jolly’s Blog

Help spread the word. These are some of my friends sharing their story, their life with Jax their son who has Juvenile Diabetes Type 1.

I’m off for a while… so I won’t be posting anything for at least a week. I hope you are well.

There are some links there to the left of people I read. Check’ em.

The past two weeks we have been looking at the story of the Good Samaritan (here’s the story) at the Kerner/Ritter home. I love this story and the things that we can learn from it. I learned something new this time around too.

What strikes me interesting as I’m trying to wrap my thoughts around this story and close it out again is that things sure haven’t changed much in the past 2k years. What hasn’t change you ask? We would rather talk about things than actually do them. Whether you claim to be a follower of Jesus or not, we’d rather sit around a table chatting about the stuff that should be or could have been done rather than getting off our butts and actually doing it.

I appreciate that Jesus doesn’t give the “expert in the law” a tongue lashing, but tells a story that brings us back around to the fact that Jesus expects us to get busy meeting the needs of people that we cross paths with. Today that could be a lot of people. Our paths are everywhere, not just on a dusty road as in this story, but on TV, the Internet, Radio, and yes on your road. We will see needs everywhere.

Here’s the kicker… do you (do I) just see the needs or like Jesus shows us in this story, do I see, am I moved (deeply in the gut) by the need, do I get involved and touch, and help alleviate that need… OR would I rather sit and talk about it (blog about it)?

What is God’s will that is going on in heaven that Jesus says we should be praying for here on earth? What do you think? Do you have any ideas?

He hits a lot of them…. Halloween is there a couple minutes in… Enjoy.

I like this author… Dan Miller. I have read his books in the past and was wondering why I hadn’t found him on FB or Twitter. So I google’d his name and Twitter and this post came up… Interesting thoughts I think.

Enjoy …   Twitterdom or Wisdom

I like food. I eat too much of it. I can’t seem to stop myself.

Here’s an example…

Before

After

I’m somewhat playing around and somewhat not. I can eat a whole deal of Oreos. I really like healthy food (growing food in Caleb speak). Fruit, Salad… all that stuff. But for some reason I gravitate to the examples already given.

Some people say I’m healthy… ummm. Some might say that. Not my doctor, but some. I once lost just over 50 pounds … dedication for six months. It was rather amazing. People didn’t say I was healthy then… but my doctor did… although she said she wanted me healthier… er… less healthy… whatever.

Anyway… just a moment in my cyber confessional booth as I clean my plate.

May you be happy and “healthy” today too.

I’m reading through the book of Joshua… a bit each week. We (the boys) and I are tackling, well we’re only reading five chapters a week, so it’s more like group hugging than tackling.

It has been a while since I went through Joshua, but I like it. A lot of interesting things going on in there. The first thing I noticed was that God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous… be strong and very courageous… be strong and courageous. Three times he throws that at Joshua. I don’t know why, maybe he was getting old and a bit weary. I don’t know… maybe it’s because God knew how whiney the Israelites were, or maybe it’s because Joshua knew and God needed to reassure him. Maybe he was hard of hearing… we are… so maybe he needed to hear it three times.

But my interest continued onto the end of the first chapter when Joshua tells a bunch of guys they have to keep fighting until God let’s them go back to the land he had given them… their response… Only be strong and courageous.

What? God’s telling me something and then people are telling me the same thing… maybe Joshua is just slow. Maybe he’s just human. I’m sure there’s a lot to the whole be strong and courageous deal… Joshua was going to attack a pretty big and bad city. But I’m thinking that maybe God leads us with his words and with others who speak the same words to us.

The question is are we listening to either… the answer may be we need to listen to both… it maybe if we don’t listen to God, even after three times he’ll send people to deliver his message too.

I don’t know.

I’ve been working through this book by Stetzer. It was on my list for last year, but now this year has almost come to an end as well… so I figured I better get to it. It is really good. I’m really enjoying reading through it.

Here’s a quote from the page I’m on (60), “we found that the most important thing we could do was not to present the newest program or idea but to seek to understand the people we were called to reach and develop processes to reach them.”

Now I know that should be followed up by a big “DUH,” but really how many churches simply grabbed the newest thing and laid it on top of their church, it’s people like a big soggy blanket and stood back and wondered why isn’t this working. I often came back from conferences… saying to myself how can I make this work, when in reality it was dead in the water before I ever got back on the plane headed home.

I should have read this book a long time ago.

Now a follow up to my post from yesterday… why in the world would I do this? Well for one reason, I like Shiner Bock… but I also know that the guys that live on either side of me… one a struggling, paid by the hour laundry mat worker and the other a school teacher who just bought his first house and is getting married in the fall needs a place to just…. haaaaaaaaa… breathe. I want to help provide that breathing room… and if I’m honest I need it to… a place to just stop and …. haaaaaaaaaa.