Living in Wyoming

I saw this article and thought it was very true.

From our perspective here in Guernsey, Wy.

Distance to Major stores (Walmart, Target, Kmart, Menards, Lowe’s and more…

Scottsbluff, Ne – 60 miles (1hour 10 minutes drive time) – Higher taxes
Cheyenne, Wy – 100 miles (1 hour 25 minutes drive time) – Includes Sam’s club
Casper, Wy – 110 miles (1 hour 37 minutes drive time) – includes Sam’s club, best buy, and commercial airport
Laramie, Wy – 105 miles (1 hour 45 minutes drive time) – has commercial airport that only services united

Shopping trips include…

1. a long list of items
2. a full day in town
3. a trailer attached to the car
4. eating in the stores to save time

Ever wonder why we do a lot of online shopping?
Here is the article from http://themetapicture.com/ever-wonder-what-its-like-living-in-the-state-with-the-lowest-population-in-the-u-s/

Good quote that is all to true

“‘If Bible study is never allowed to change our doctrine, indeed our beliefs, then why do it?’”

http://ref.ly/o/themelios17-3/132766 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Spring Cleaning at Church

Today we had a great turn out from our people to help do some spring cleaning around the church. We got a lot done and everything looks much better. The old saying is true, “many hands make light work.”

The one regret is that we didn’t take before and after pictures.

Great time fishing and had a good catch

After our midweek service I headed out with a friend to get some fishing in. We walked for several miles across beautiful  country and were rewarded with a nice catch of brown and rainbow trout. This was my first time of catching trout and I enjoyed it.

Thoughts Require Much Prayer

“To think God’s thoughts requires much prayer. If you do not pray much, you are not thinking God’s thoughts. If you do not read your Bible much and often and reverently, you are not thinking God’s thoughts. Those thoughts you are having—and your head buzzes with them all day long and into the night—are earthly thoughts—thoughts of a fallen race. They are the thoughts of a lost society. They should not be our thoughts. Paul said, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).
There also has to be a lot of meditation. We ought to learn to live in our Bibles. Get one with print big enough to read so it does not punish your eyes. Look around until you find a good one, and then learn to love it.”

http://ref.ly/o/rutrotrev/53144 via the Logos Bible Android app.

To improve or change the church you must begin with...

“the church is not the building. A church is an assembly of individuals. There is a lot of meaningless dialogue these days about the church. It is meaningless because those engaged in the dialogue forget that a church has no separate existence. A church is not an entity in itself, but rather is composed of individual persons. It is the same error made about the state. Politicians sometimes talk about the state as though it were an entity in itself. Social workers talk about society, but society is people. So is the church. The church is made up of real people, and when they come together we have the church. Whatever the people are who make up the church, that is the kind of church it is—no worse and no better, no wiser, no holier, no more ardent and no more worshipful. To improve or change the church you must begin with individuals.”

http://ref.ly/o/rutrotrev/11197 via the Logos Bible Android app.

“Does Mr. So-and-so himself believe and what he says?”

“Dear Sunday-school teachers, day-school teachers, superintendents of schools, district visitors, visitors of the sick, tract circulators, let all those with whom you have to do see that you are happy men and women. Let it never be asked by the children we teach, or those we visit, “Does Mr. So-and-so himself believe and what he says?” “Does Mrs. So-and-so herself believe and enjoy the things she speaks of to me?” Therefore, my beloved brethren, do not expect fruit, unless you speak in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/77765 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Pray as if everything depended on your prayer

“Water the tracts with your tears, water them with your prayers. As you give the tract, let your soul go out after the tract. Cry to God, “Go with this tract; direct it to the right person.” And when you have given it, or when you have given the Testament, cry to God that He would graciously be pleased to give His blessing upon your effort; but at the same time labour as if everything depended upon your labour. Put no trust in your labour, but let all your dependence be upon God the Holy Ghost; at the same time pray as if everything depended on your prayer.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/198263 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Who Are You

“But now, while yet in ignorance partially, how should we walk,—we who belong to this heavenly family? The great point is to remember that what we have and what we are, we have and are by the grace of God. How is it that we do believe in the Lord Jesus; that we are on the Lord’s side; that we look to the Lord Jesus as the Head, and trust in Him for salvation? How does it come that the life of the risen Jesus is in us, that we are risen up again and quickened with Him to sit with Him in heavenly places? Verily, brethren, we did it not ourselves. It was all of grace that it is thus,—that we have been made to believe in Jesus, that He has been revealed to our hearts. Not only was He given in the way of grace by the Father, but it is of grace that He ever was revealed to our hearts.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/32613 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Reading the Bible

Now, beloved fellow-disciples, let us see to it that during the little span of time we are here on earth we are fruit-bearers. We are called to show forth the praises of Him who bought us; we are no longer our own, we are His who has given Himself for us, and our business is to give ourselves to Him,—with our substance, with our all, to give ourselves to Him, and to seek for the little time that we live here to bear fruit to the honour and praise of His name. In order that it may be so, let us come to this precious book to obtain nourishment and strength for our souls. Now, are you readers of the Bible? There are so many religious publications now, that they furnish a great temptation to neglect this blessed book, and to read all sorts of books, periodicals, and newspapers. Now, if you want real happiness, real spiritual strength, seek day by day to get to this blessed book. Are you in the habit of reading regularly through the Bible? Some just open the Bible, and where it falls open there they read; but after a little while it will always open in the same place. How do we read other books? We begin at the beginning and turn over page after page. So should we read God’s blessed book. I recommend to you something I have known the blessedness of for forty years. After my conversion, I did not read the Bible much, but I read missionary papers and other books. But since July 1829 (now nearly 43 years ago) I have been reading God’s blessed book: I read sometimes in the Old Testament, and Sometimes in the New Testament. I put a mark where I left off, and read on from there when I come to it again, reading thus regularly on. During these 43 years I have read about one hundred times through the Bible. And I am not tired of it yet. It is just as fresh and as new and as pleasant, and I am just as delighted with it as if I had never read it before. One speaks to you who has known the blessedness of it for forty-three years and a half; and to it I owe all I have, and I am just as happy in reading this portion as another portion. We have not to pick and choose; it is the whole that constitutes the word of God. Is it not a shame that we should have God’s blessed book, and not have once read it through?
“A Faithful Saying” http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/213141 via the Logos Bible Android app.

A great deal that passes for the deeper life is nothing more or less than basic Christianity

“A great deal that passes for the deeper life is nothing more or less than basic Christianity. There is nothing deeper about it, and it is where we should have been from the start. We should have been happy, joyous, victorious Christians walking in the Holy Spirit and not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. Instead we have been chasing each other around the perpetual mountain. What we need is what the old Methodists called a sound conversion. There is a difference between conversion and a sound conversion. People who have never been soundly converted do not have the Spirit to enlighten them. When they read the Sermon on the Mount or the teaching passages of the epistles that tell them how to live or the doctrinal passages that tell how they can live, they are unaffected. The Spirit who wrote them is not witnessing in their hearts because they have not been born of the Spirit. That often happens. People clean up, throw away their pipes, start to pay their bills and live right and then say, “I want to join the church.” So we question them, “Do you believe that Christ is the Son of God?” “Yes,” they reply. “Do you believe He rose from the dead?” “Yes.” “Do you believe He is coming again?” “Yes, I do.” Well, so does the devil and he trembles. People get into the church who are not converted at all. We are so tenderhearted, sentimental and eager that we get them on any grounds at all, if they just say the right words for us. But maybe some of these people have never been converted in the first place.”

http://ref.ly/o/rutrotrev/26081 via the Logos Bible Android app.

http://www.logos.com/mobile

Quote From William Tyndale

“Christ desires his mysteries to be published abroad as widely as possible. I would that [the Gospels and the epistles of Paul] were translated into all languages, of all Christian people, and that they might be read and known.”
—William Tyndale

A game changer in Christian history

William Tyndale was one of the most important figures of the English Reformation and Western history as a whole. His English translation was the first complete Bible to be translated directly from the Greek and Hebrew into English. Coupled with the invention of the printing press, that translation made the Tyndale Bible the first-ever mass-produced English Bible—and made Scripture available to commoners for the first time in history.
Tyndale’s impact on the modern Bible can’t be overstated—research suggests that 83% of the King James Bible’s New Testament was taken verbatim from Tyndale’s work, and 76% of the Old Testament.
Despite Tyndale’s positive impact on spreading Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church saw his making the Bible available to commoners as a direct challenge to its authority. Because of this, in 1535, Tyndale was betrayed by a friend and turned into the authorities, and on October 6, 1536, he was condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake. Tyndale’s dying wish was that God would “open the King of England’s eyes,” and just two years later, his wish came to fruition: King Henry VIII authorized the “Great Bible,” largely made up of Tyndale’s work, to be read aloud in the Church of England.

Though Not Yet Perfect In Love, We Are To Aim After...

“Though not yet perfect in love, we are to aim after that for which we have been apprehended of God in Christ Jesus. We ought to love one another in spite of the weaknesses and infirmities we see in one another. My brethren have their infirmities, I have my infirmities; God knows them all, and He only can estimate which are the greater. That is not a question for us.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/48412 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Spurgeon’s Critics

Who would dare criticize the Charles Spurgeon, the great prince of preachers? Maybe more people than you think. The Spurgeon Commentary: Galatians opens with a brief biography of his ministry.

This passage might surprise you:

When 19-year-old Charles Spurgeon was called to the New Park Street Pulpit in 1854, London newspapers derided him as a brash upstart. Critics complained that his plainspoken, direct speaking style was too edgy—and dangerously innovative. A secular magazine referred to his colloquial speech as “slang.” A newspaper editorial categorized his preaching as “ginger-pop sermonizing.” One particularly harsh critic wrote:

He is nothing unless he is an actor—unless exhibiting that matchless impudence which is his great characteristic, indulging in coarse familiarity with holy things, declaiming in a ranting and colloquial style, strutting up and down the platform as though he were at the Surrey Theatre, and boasting of his own intimacy with Heaven with nauseating frequency. His fluency, self-possession, oratorical tricks, and daring utterances, seem to fascinate his less-thoughtful hearers, who love excitement more than devotion.

During that first year, pundits regularly predicted an early end to Spurgeon’s ministry in London: “He is a nine days’ wonder—a comet that has suddenly shot across the religious atmosphere. He has gone up like a rocket, and ere long will come down like a stick.” Read More 

An Intimate Look at the Life of A. W. Tozer: Passionate Worship

I read this article and thought it was encouraging.

A. W. Tozer’s number-one passion was God. It was never a matter of convenience with him, but a disciplined life of joyful sacrifice. He would rather spend time alone with God than anyone else. Of course many, including his friends, misunderstood this.

Tozer’s time alone with God was not merely intellectual or some religious exercise to finish so he could move on with his day—it was a personal encounter with God in adoration and worship. Often he would lie prostrate on the floor in silent worship giving God the opportunity to speak. And he was never disappointed.

His daily worship was not routine. In fact, it was anything but routine. He regarded worship as an eagerly anticipated encounter with God. God never disappointed him on this level. His was a daily pursuit that yielded much fruit throughout his life. Read More

Religion of Feeling

“Never let your religion be the religion of feeling, but let it all spring from what you see in this blessed Book.”

http://ref.ly/o/jehvahmagnfd/118854 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Photo Update

I realized that I hadn’t posted any pictures for a long time. Here are some photos of John’s birthday, Christmas, and various other random life moments from our family.