June 28th, 2004 | Published in General
Quite a few Apple updates today for everyone to drool at. Here is a quick synopsis:
June 25th, 2004 | Published in Religion
USATODAY.com - A new generation spreads the word
I’m not sure what to make of this stuff yet. Something inside me tells me it is not good. What happened to holiness? We’re making a bunch of atheological Christians without a passion for purity and who want to be more conformed to the world than to Scripture.
[cribbed from SkinnyJ]
June 23rd, 2004 | Published in General
Thanks to Aaron Shafovaloff from BiggerGOD.com for sending me a Gmail invite! Make sure you check out his site–there is alot of great stuff on there!
June 22nd, 2004 | Published in Art and Design
Seems like a great way to do this! I’ve always used divs, but this seems more semanticly-correct to me. I think I will use this method from now on.
June 9th, 2004 | Published in Religion
Here are some of my favorite quotes from Sibbes’s Bruised Reed, which I just recently finished:
“Our hearts, like criminals, until they be beaten from all evasions, never cry for the mercy of the Judge.” (4)
“Shall our sins discourage us, when he appears there only for sinners? Are you bruised? Be of good comfort, he calls you. Conceal not your wounds, open all before him and take not Satan’s counsel. Go to Christ, although trembling . . .” (9)
“It would be a good contest amongst Christians, one to labour to give no offence, and the other to labour to take none. The best men are severe to themselves, tender over others.” (23)
“Truth fears nothing so much as concealment, and desires nothing so much as clearly to be laid open to the view of all.” (26-27)
“. . . love God, not because of a particular emergency, in that one thinks one might escape some danger if one had grace, but as a loving heart is carried to the thing loved for the sake of some excellency in it.” (43)
“All scandalous actions are only thoughts at the first. Ill thoughts are as little thieves, which, creeping in at the window, open the door to greater. Thoughts are the seeds of actions.” (47)
“God accepts our prayers, though weak, because we are his own children, and they come from his own Spirit; because they are according to his own will; and because they are offered in Christ’s mediation, and he takes them, and mingles them with his own incense (Rev. 8:3).” (51)
“‘Ye have heard of the patience of Job,’ says James (James 5:11). We have heard of his impatience too, but it pleased God mercifully to overlook that.” (55)
“Cast yourself into the arms of Christ, and if you perish, perish there. If you do not, you are sure to perish. If mercy is to be found anywhere, it is there.” (65)
“God sees fit that we should taste that cup of which his Son drank so deep, that we might feel a little what sin is, and what his Son’s love was. But our comfort is that Christ drank the dregs of the cup for us, and will succour us, so that our spirits may not utterly fail under that little taste of his displeasure which we may feel.” (66)
“What a joyful spectacle is this to Satan and his faction, to see those that are separated from the world fall in pieces among themselves! Our discord is our enemy’s melody.” (74)
“They seek for heaven in hell that seek for spiritual love in an unchanged heart.” (81)
“Truth is truth, and error, error, and that which is unlawful is unlawful, whether men think so or not. God has put an eternal difference between light and darkness, good and ill, which no creature’s conceit can alter.” (84)
“The winds may toss the ship wherein Christ is, but not overturn it. The waves may dash against the rock, but they only break themselves against it.” (94)
“Having a well-ordered, uniform life, not consisting of fits and starts, shows a well-ordered heart; as in a clock, when the hammer strikes well, and the hand of the dial points well, it is a sign that the wheel are rightly set.” (99)
“Of all persons, a man guided by Christ is the best; and of all creatures in the world, a man guided merely by will and affection, next to the devil, is the worst.” (108)
“If Christ’s judgment shall be victorious, then popery [Catholicism], being an opposite frame, set up by the wit of man to maintain stately idleness, must fall. And it is fallen already in the hearts of those on whom the light of Christ has shone. It is a lie, and founded on a lie, on the infallible judgment of a man subject to sin and error.” (108)
” . . . this is the vanity of our natures, that though we shun above all things to be deceived and mistaken in present things, yet in the greatest matters of all we are willingly ignorant and misled.” (113)
“Thus the desperate madness of men is laid open, that they would rather be under the guidance of their own lusts, and in consequence of Satan himself, to their endless destruction, than put their feet into Christ’s fetters and their necks under his yoke; though, indeed, Christ’s service is the only true liberty.” (121)
“The very belief that faith shall be victorious is a means to make it so indeed.” (127)
All quotes taken from Sibbes, Richard. The Bruised Reed (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 101-102. Originally published in 1630.
June 9th, 2004 | Published in General
Looks good! I can’t wait for them to get the final release out (they are aiming for monday). The windows version has a new theme, but it is not finished yet. That would make Windows people happy, because the old theme wasn’t very professional looking. The first thing I did when I installed it on anyone’s computer was to change the theme!
June 9th, 2004 | Published in General
Wow. The latest PowerMac includes a 1.25Ghz frontside bus and dual 2.5Ghz 64-bit CPUs. Plus they have introduced liquid cooling into the mainstream. Simply amazing, as usual.
June 6th, 2004 | Published in Religion
All of us make countless decisions every day—little ones like when to brush our teeth, and big ones like what to spend our money on. When we make a decision, we quickly take a quick snapshot of all of our available options to see which one is best. According to our standards, priorities, and what we think will be best for us in the end, we make our final decision. In short, we weigh things in our minds and find the best contender.
But sometimes even after deliberated weighing we still don’t know which the best contender is. They all look equally advantageous to us. Richard Sibbes, a minister in the early seventeenth century, helps us at these perplexing times by offering the following helps for judgment:
We should judge things as:
“We should also judge of things now as we do hereafter when the soul shall be best able to judge, as when we are under any public calamity, or at the hour of death, when the soul gathers itself from all other things to itself. We should look back to former experience and see what is most agreeable to it, and what was best in our worst times. If grace is or was best then, it is best now. We should also labour to judge of things as he does who must judge us, and as holy men judge, who are led by the Spirit. More particularly, we should judge according to what those judge that have no interest in any benefit that may come by the thing which is in question; for outward things blind the eyes even of the wise.” †
The decisions we make in this life affects what happens to us in the life after, when all of our decisions will be judged by that Great and Awesome Judge. Therefore, when we make our various decisions throughout the day, let us ponder what is best based on the previous suggestions and on what Scripture teaches. Remember that Christians are supposed to act like Jesus Christ and make him look good and glorious by what we are doing. If our chosen decision does not “show off” Christ better than the others, it probably isn’t the best decision.
† Taken from Sibbes, Richard. The Bruised Reed (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 101-102. Originally published in 1630.