Bent Ear

Pictures in Ruth - On the Way Unto Judah

2009-08-25T23:05:00.002-06:00

Pictures in Ruth - On the Way Unto Judah
August 23, 2009

As we look at the "types" represented for us in the first chapter of Ruth, we see three women on the way from Moab (a type of the flesh or carnal nature), to Judah or Israel (a type of the victorious, abundant, Spirit-filled life). We as Christians are to be living supernatural lives, lives that are marked by the power of the Holy Spirit, not our carnal nature. How do we get there?

Pictures in Ruth - The Tragedy of Moab

2009-08-25T23:01:00.002-06:00

Pictures in Ruth - The Tragedy of Moab
August 16, 2009

Catching the Vision

2009-08-13T00:09:00.002-06:00

Due to the fact that Pastor and Marejean are out of town, I had the privilege of being the speaker tonight at our weekly Wednesday night prayer meeting and Bible study. God has been speaking to me about the need for praying churches and praying Christians. I hope this message helps us all to see that there is a greater hunger we can have for God and a greater appetite we can sustain for Him.

Can You Spare 11 Minutes Today?

2009-08-10T09:02:00.002-06:00

If you would, take 11 minutes and listen to this short clip by John Piper of the supremacy of Christ. We serve a God who is supreme!

The Supremacy Of Christ by John Piper

How Serious Are We?

2009-08-09T21:39:00.002-06:00

In thinking over some of the things the Lord has been placing on my heart recently, I think we would all do well to ask ourselves, "How serious are we about serving the Lord?"

Is "Seek ye first the kingdom of God" an actuality in our day to day walk, or is it more like, "Seek ye the kingdom of God, after I spend time with my family, after I get some down time from work, after I feel ready to..."?

I fear that we are more preoccupied with the things of this life than God Himself. Dear Christian, how serious are we?

Master's Men 2009

2009-08-01T01:39:00.004-06:00

Me, Nick, Paul and Dave prior to hitting the road to California

This past May was the Master's Men conference in Fresno, CA. Nick, Paul, Dave and I drove down in the Schallenberger's Suburban from Logan, and met up with Scott in Fresno. It was a good conference and we heard some good messages. We were joined by Kaitie who had just recently finished her first year at college and we all drove back to Utah. All in all it was a good trip.

Today's Synthetic Gospel - excerpt

2009-08-03T08:30:00.002-06:00

Today’s Synthetic Gospel
by Greg Gordon

A DETHRONED CHRIST

Where is the power of Edwards or Whitefield? Where is a modern day Wesley or Spurgeon? To put it another way, where is the message that these men preached with divine authority? The gospel message that they preached was full of God, throbbing with God, God was the gospel. They preached the character of God, the law of God, repentance towards God, acceptance with God, and dependence on God. Everything in their preaching was Christ Exalting and God honoring. Spurgeon said: “The sermon which does not lead to Christ, or of which Jesus Christ is not the top and the bottom, is a sort of sermon that will make the devils in hell laugh, but might make the angels of God weep.” If a gospel message does not begin with the lifting up of God, it then is the lowering of heaven to earth and making what is Holy mundane. George Whitefield said: “The Christian world is in a deep sleep; nothing but a loud shout can awaken them out of it!” We are preaching a man-centered gospel that denies a Holy God. The gospel begins with God and ends with God, if we miss this we miss the gospel. We are living in a age of synthetic gospel preaching, hence the Church has little power in modern day evangelism. Satan has been successfully employing men in preaching a dethroned Christ and a powerless Gospel.

For the full article, visit click HERE

Pictures in Ruth - Dwelling in Moab

2009-08-02T22:19:00.002-06:00

Pictures in Ruth - Dwelling in Moab
August 2, 2009

Just as it should be strange to us, that a man whose name means "My God is King" is found dwelling in Moab, so too the presence of the carnal nature in our churches should be strange to us as well. The flesh is our mortal enemy and is possibly being allowed to come into our churches...

Naomi - The Mistake of Bitterness

2009-07-19T22:57:00.008-06:00

Naomi - The Mistake of Bitterness
October 28, 2007
34:18

Mahlon and Chilion - The Mistake of a Lack of Separation

2009-07-20T11:01:00.001-06:00

Mahlon and Chilion - The Mistake of a Lack of Separation
November 11, 2007
43:10

I'm Back

2009-07-19T22:33:00.002-06:00

I've been debating on whether or not to continue blogging. I just don't have the same desire to do it as I used to, but have been convinced that I should continue. My interests are not what they used to be. I don't take as many pictures, and airplanes....well, even the Goose doesn't have the magic it once had for me.

I still like messing around with computers, and have tried to keep abreast of the latest technology via work and the internet. I'm still working at Staples and am going on 5 years there this August.

My main interest has been studying the book of Ruth. I am still teaching Sunday School and we have just barely reached the end of the first chapter (after what....two years?). I enjoy doing the study and having the opportunity to share that with others. I will start posting my messages as podcasts that can be listened to here or downloaded. (Still playing with the infrastructure behind that).

Well, for those who still swing by here, thanks for looking and I hope that some of what God has been teaching me out of Ruth will be a blessing to you.

The Next Post

2009-04-04T01:10:00.002-06:00

After being reminded that my blog is in need of updating and having promised to post something, here's the latest.

We just finished (well, on Sunday) our annual Missions Conference. Our speaker was Dave Hardy and his wife. The services were good and the reminder and call of missions was well expressed. It was good to see Bro. Dave again and to meet his wife this time.

Later this month we will be having Dave McCracken (spelling?) come and do our week-long spring revival. He is actually the first special speaker I heard at Grace when I arrived back in '04. Last year, at the Master's Men's Conference in California, he was one of the speakers. So, I am looking forward to hearing from him again.

Work is going well. We've been coming together as a team and really starting to see good performance demographics from the staff. Retail is definitely not a one man show, and it is good to see people catch the vision and run with it.

Well, it is after one in the morning, and I need to be rolling out the door at around 4am to get down to the base for my drill weekend. Catch ya all later.

Post 401

2009-03-04T21:17:00.011-07:00

Waiting for engine start

Ok, so the title of this blog entry really has nothing to do with its content, but since I now have over 400 posts on Bent Ear, I thought it was noteworth, if even in passing.

Many of you know I am in the USAF Reserves. I am a crewchief on the F-16's and serve as an all-around grease monkey (aka: jack of all trades, master of none) on the aircraft. My job is to make sure that all of the daily inspections are completed and documented in the aircraft forms, that all of the necessary hydraulic and nitrogen servicing is accomplished, and assisting the pilot in the launch and recovery of the aircraft.

By the end of next April, I will have hit my 8 year mark in the Air Force. During our trip down to Tyndall AFB in Florida, I was able to get a camera pass and take pictures out on the flight line. One of my buddies was willing to shoot a few pictures while I was launching out the jet, so I thought I'd post them so you all know what I do.

The pilot prepares to start the engine

Beginning my checks

The pilot throttles up the engine

Pulling the landing gear pins

Saturday Shenanigans - 2

2009-02-28T21:56:00.004-07:00

Well, now to the second part of my weekend shenanigans...

(Here is the short version: today I took apart an old laptop and removed its internal wireless card and antenna, and installed these in my laptop I got back in 2001. Now I have wireless on it! Sweet!)

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE SHORT STORY, HERE IS THE NARRATIVE OF TODAY'S EVENTS, JUST AS THEY HAPPENED...

Back in 2001, I purchased a Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop. I actually got it off of eBay. It was only a week or so old, and the fellow that had purchased it decided that he really wanted something different. So, I was able to get a brand new system for a couple hundred less than what I would have paid directly from Dell.

The Birth Certificate from Dell (yes, I did blur out the service tag number so you couldn't read it and then go on Dell's site and try to find out what's in this system!)

Say what you will about Dell, but I have had no complaints with this system. It came with Windows ME preinstalled, which, even at the time, I was not too keen on. In fact, when the system arrived, I formatted the hard drive and installed Windows 98 on it. After using it for a while, it became apparent that it actually ran BETTER with Windows ME, so I formatted the drive again and started over with ME.

Here is what the ole' girl looks like

I have had that computer for the last 8 years, and have not had one lick of trouble with it. The battery finally went out on it, but it still runs well with the AC adapter. I have run many different versions of Linux on it, and even a BSD or two. Come to think of it, I may have even run OpenSolaris on the ole' girl.

My one beef with it lately has been the lack of wireless. Sure, I could fork out $40 or so for a PC card adapter or even a USB adapter, but come on now, is it really worth it for an 8-year old system?

Let me digress for a moment, because there is another story that ties into this one and will help to explain my day's activities. For quite some time, we have been allowed to do computer returns at our store. This helped us in taking care of the customer, especially if the problem with their computer would normally have required sending their computer back to the manufacturer.

Every once in a while, a laptop would return for which we could get no return to vendor authorization. These would silently sit in our back room, collecting whatever bits of dust they could get their plastic little chassis on. Well, one day I decided to check with my boss and see if there was a chance I could buy the lot of them. He agreed, so that evening I went home with five laptops, in various stages of repair (or disrepair as the case may be).

Well, to shorten the story up a bit, one of the computers was an old built-to-order HP. This thing easily exceeded the bounds of a portable computer and landed squarely in the realm of "luggable" or "budgeable". Since it was missing both its hard drive and AC adaptor, I felt it was the perfect victim...er...specimen, for my project today.

Ok, this isn't MY Inspiron, but, like the earlier picture, it is a brother or sister

This morning I got a curious bug to see if my Inspiron had what is called a mini-PCI port in it. So, I turned it over, got out a handful of trusty screwdrivers, and opened up the access panel on the bottom of the computer. Sure enough, it had a mini-PCI port, but there was currently a card plugged into it. After determining that this was the network card and 56K dial up modem, I had an idea. What if that old luggable HP had a wireless mini-PCI card in it? Could I put that in my Inspiron and make it wireless? Well, with nothing holding me back but fear itself, I began with my "cardectomy".

After unscrewing a countless number of small screws, the old HP began to grudgingly come apart in my hands. I removed the wireless mini-PCI card, only to discover that these little guys use an antenna (basically a set of wires) which snaked its way towards the LCD screen. Not being one to quickly give up (hey, the odds were in my favor), I disassembled the screen and removed it from the laptop chassis. I then extricated the antenna (wires) from behind the LCD screen and voila, I was set.

Here is the same make and model Broadcom wireless card I installed today

I carefully attached the antenna wires to the card and inserted it into my Inspiron. First I tried booting with one of my Linux distros, but the card wasn't recognized, so I installed Windows XP. The old Inspiron should have given up the ghost (hey, she only sports 192MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive) but she chugged right along, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. (Remember, the ole' girl was in my possession and operating as my computer before XP was a gleam in Bill Gates' eye).

Well, downloading the XP driver for that card on my desktop computer, I copied it on a flash drive and installed it on the Inspiron. Just like clockwork, up came the wireless card and I was online. Between the wireless and a good Linux distro (just haven't quite decided yet) this almost decade-old computer has a new lease on life!

Saturday Shenanigans - 1

2009-02-28T21:11:00.009-07:00

Well ok, I'll admit it, I played around today. Yeah, I did accomplish a few things...but mostly I played. One of the things I did was update my desktop computer with an application called RocketDock, a free application designed to help manage your frequently used shortcuts.

Previously, I had used the Quick Launch bar across the top of the screen. I had it set to autohide and loaded it up with the majority of the applications I use. It was simple, practical and very utilitarian.

Below I have included a couple of screenshots from my desktop today. (Yes, I know I have a lot of icons on the desktop!) The first picture shows the RocketDock at the bottom of the screen. In the second picture, I have moved the mouse over the OpenOffice.org Writer icon, which is enlarged accordingly.

RocketDock

RocketDock mouseover

It functions very fast and the graphics transitions are smooth. Overall I think it is a definite improvement to my desktop and general user experience. While I didn't get the impression that this is open source software, it is free...so the price is right. If you would like your own copy, just visit: http://www.rocketdock.com

(And yes, for you Mac users, this is similar to the OS X Dock)

Pics From Thanksgiving '08

2009-02-28T08:45:00.001-07:00

I'm Pressing On...

2009-02-23T18:08:00.002-07:00

"I'm pressing on the upward way..." So begins the old hymn. It was with these words that yesterday's Sunday School lesson out of Ruth began. We were looking at verse nineteen which reads, "So they two went until they came to Bethlehem..." This was as far as we got, though my intention had been to examine the whole verse.

The lesson was entitled "Continuing Until." We looked at the fact that there are no incidentals in the Bible, this small sentence was included with just as much Divine intent as the passages on the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. So, it was important for us to consider why this verse was recorded.

The basic principle we drew was that of continuing until the end. Naomi and Ruth did not travel on a different path than the one they had set out on, the one which lead to Bethlehem. Also, they did not stop along the way and settle there, for example, stopping in Jericho or Jerusalem and living there. They both continued until they arrived at Bethlehem.

No matter what we face in these last days before Christ comes again, we must continue on. The Bible adjures us to press on, continue on, until the day of Christ Jesus. We are to be found often in church, often in the Bible, often in prayer. We are to be about the business of the Master and in fellowship one with another.

Whether we face the daily discouragement of a physical ailment, an emotional hindrance, or financial difficulties, we are to press on. Though we are persecuted or reviled for Christ's sake, we are to press on. Let us take example from these two widows on the road to Judah. They would not stay nor stray until the day they arrived at their destination...Bethlehem, the "house of bread."

Google Chrome

2009-02-15T01:14:00.004-07:00

My home screen in Google Chrome

Being a bit of a computer/gadget buff, I am part of the continuous search for better pieces of software and hardware. (Better being defined as closer to my likes and tastes). For years I have been a fan of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

Sure, like any Microsoft product, it was constantly attacked and criticized. It had its flaws and its bugs. It didn't completely implement HTML and CSS coding according to standards. Security vulnerabilites seemed to be discovered every week or two.

Yet, it seemed to be as fast if not faster than the other competing products. While I was developing web sites, I downloaded different browsers to see how my HTML work would look and be interpreted. I found IE to be right up there with Firefox, Safari, Netscape, Opera, etc.

Well, when IE version 7 came along I immediately downloaded it to see what had improved. To my disappointment, the screen interface had been highly modified and much of the ability to customize and arrange the screen had been removed from the user.

So disenchanted was I, that I uninstalled it, reverting back to IE6. But, my love affair with IE had ended. After some testing, I settled on Firefox. I was able to customize it to look similar to the setup I had used in IE and all was good.

Well, for several months now I have been using a new browser, put out by Google. It is called Google Chrome and I have to say I think I am beginning to fall in love again. It is fast and light with a minimalistic interface.

One of my favorite features is the ability to do a search directly from the address bar. There is no need for another toolbar with a search box in it, everything can be done from the address bar. The other feature that I really like, though it is different than other browsers, is that nine of my most frequently visited sites are thumbnailed on the page. These thumbnails are automatically updated with the latest site changes upon visiting that site.

It may be that you're not looking for a new browser or even desire to try one, but if you are "in the market" I'd definitely give this one a look.

Greetings From Florida

2009-01-18T00:47:00.003-07:00

Howdy from Panama City, Florida. A week ago Friday, I received a call at work from my flight chief. He asked if I was ready to go to Florida. I said no, I wasn't on the list. To which he replied that I was. So, 24 hours later I was on the plane to Florida. I've been here a week and am facing one more week. How about that for fun?

A Very Sobering Question...

2009-01-07T23:19:00.001-07:00

What's Your Favorite?

2009-01-07T22:58:00.002-07:00

At The Turning of the Year

2009-01-06T18:54:00.002-07:00

As I sit here in front of my computer screen, I am pondering exactly what to say and how even to start. The fact that my last post was made in the waning days of September has not been lost on me. As a matter of fact I have considered making a blog entry several times, but have chosen not to.

To summarize the necessary details, I am fine, work continues on, and church is going well. I am still teaching out of the book of Ruth, in fact, we are still only partially through the first chapter. We are currently on a mini-series on being "Steadfastly Minded" and are considering different aspects of Ruth's "confession of faith" found in verses sixteen and seventeen. Perhaps you would be interested in hearing some of these studies, perhaps not.

As to the activities I have been involved in during the closing months of 2008, feel free to inquire. I will try to answer as best I can, and post applicable pictures. This last year has seen some of the highest highs and lowest lows I have ever experienced in my short 31 years on this earth. However, suffice it to say that I am firmly convinced of the unchanging and perfect character of God.

The Bible declares Him to be a good God, and whether I feel like He is or isn't does not change that fact. He is good. What He does is good. What He allows in our lives is good.

If there is anything I would give as encouragement and inspiration is simply this, as we have stepped over the threshold of the old year and passed into the earliest days of the new, make this one thing your primary focus this year: to cultivate a personal, passionate and vibrant relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I have been struck by Ruth's words, "Thy God, my God." Have we truly made Christ "my God"? Christ Himself said that many will come to Him on that day and say "Lord, Lord...haven't we cast out demons in your name? Haven't we done this and done that in your name? Haven't we done miraculous things all in your name?" And His answer is simply "Depart...I never knew you."

How much time did we invest in Christ this last year? How much effort and thought did we invest in the things which please Him? When was the last time we went out of our way simply to do something to please our Savior?

Camping Trip Hike Photos

2008-09-29T15:46:00.003-06:00

July Camping Trip

2008-09-26T20:16:00.005-06:00

We had a youth campout on July 18th and 19th. We met up at the Right Hand Fork campground (which is really the Left Hand Fork...but that's a different story...) Matt and Annie and Paul and Sara were already there when I arrived. That evening we all sat around the fire and sang some songs. Gary Stonehouse did a short devotion, and then Paul and Sara took the kids "snipe" hunting.

The next day we hiked a mile or so to a small field and the kids played softball. Then the main group headed back to camp, but a few of us decided to go on a hike. We'll save the scenery pics for another post.

Church commuter services

The main campsite

Of bugs and tents

Sara seranades Annie

Group time around the fire

Brooke Stonehouse nails the softball

Juan heads for home, as Paul offers encouragement

Gina sends the ball on its way

To the ball: "Be afraid...be very afraid"

Caddy Style

2008-09-25T08:39:00.003-06:00

(Do you see me in the picture?)