Sermon for Sunday June 2, 2013:
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Communion
Luke 22:15 NIV
And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
1 Corinthians 11:27-32 NIV
So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment. Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world.
1 John 1:9 NIV
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Luke 22:15-18 NIV
And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
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My deepest problem:
Is God’s plan defective, or is the issue with man?
Reality of continuing identity as a sinner: The power of sin is broken but the presence of sin still remains.
Romans 7:24 NIV
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
Galatians 5:22 NIV
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Acts 9
Ephesians
Our deepest problem exists deep inside and not outside of ourselves…
The humbling reality is this: My deepest problem exists deep inside of me and not outside of me.
2 Peter — I have given you everything you need….
James 4
James 4:6 NIV
But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
Category: Uncategorized
Notes from Sunday School for May 26, 2013
Sunday school for May 26, 2013:
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1 Thessalonians 5:16 NIV
Rejoice always,
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1 Thessalonians 5:1-2 NIV
Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.
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1 Thessalonians 5:4, 7-8, 11-16 NIV
But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else. Rejoice always,
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Luke 10:30-37 NIV
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
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Sermon for May 26, 2013
Sermon for May 26, 2013:
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1 Chronicles 16:7-12 NIV
That day David first appointed Asaph and his associates to give praise to the Lord in this manner: Give praise to the Lord , proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
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…i’d take it for free…

…that poor thing needs more than “some work”…
…but it does run good–if you can get it to start.
…and if you don’t mind a nice little amount of smoke…
(…it’s also fun to take out on ice!)
…found on craigslist.

…for some reason, I don’t think anyone will jump on this offer…
…most evenings…

…the answer I usually give…
Notes from Sunday School, May 19, 2013
Sunday school, May 19, 2013
James 1:5 NIV
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
Sermon for Sunday, May 19, 2013
Sermon for Sunday, May 19, 2013:
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Notes: picnic June 2nd 6:30pm
Next Sunday, 26 combined service, Sunday school 9am, church 10am
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Psalm 57
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Today’s message: My Deepest Problem
1 Peter “were now going through this alone”
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Genesis 39:19-20 NIV
When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison,
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Exodus 16:1-2 NIV
The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
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RIP, Google Talk. :’-(
Twice this week I seemed to sing the praises of some neat advances in Google’s apps/ecosystem; today, however…

I received the notification this morning of Google Talk’s upgrade to Hangouts. (Yeah, I know I could’ve sought out the upgrade yesterday, but just letting things come in their own time is more fun–kind of like getting a surprise gift. Additionally, I’ve been trying not to search out what’s going on–again, the whole surprise thing.)
After reading the promises of what was now available, I found myself excited and a bit giddy, anxiously awaiting for the app to hurry up and install so that I could play with it! But, then…
…I discovered that I hate it.
*sigh*

Hangouts is so much more than Talk–aka Google Talk, GTalk, GChat; in addition to the “traditional” concepts of an IM client/service, Hangouts brings the ability for a mini-chatroom environment among a maximum of ten participants–a feature of the former Google Hangout service, which has also been absorbed into the new Hangouts. Video conferencing, “calls”, and a wider variety of emoticons/emoji are also available in the new Hangouts–SMS and integration/absorption of Google Voice are allegedly forthcoming, as well–making the service/app an uber-end-all messaging app. Oh, and did I mention the cross-platform abilities, with the service having an app on iOS, and the Chrome plugin available on the PC?
…but…
…it pushes Google+, a service which I still don’t use–well, sort of. I do have a G+ profile–again, something I was part-way pushed into–and I have managed to find ways to push content to my profile–in the off-chance that someone I know actually creates a profile and wishes to seek me out. (I also “had” to create a profile so that I could ready myself to create a page for HarrisonEMA, should G+ ever become popular…)
… functionality is–well, I dunno–it works, but the interface is missing something…
On the Android device, I must say that the appearance of the app is rather nice, but use and navigation–despite conforming to the “new” Android standards–is a bit clunky and confusing. I could say that my opinion/experience is due to having an older OS, but a quick search in G+ reveals that people running ICS and Jellybean are thinking the same thing. (Yes, I used G+; I mean, where else am I going to get the best voice on Hangout usage?)
Playing with Hangouts on the PC is even worse than on the phone…

In order to use Hangouts, one must either go through their Gmail, use the sidebar that pops up on Google+, or install a Chrome addition; I briefly checked it out on G+ and installed it for Chrome–I didn’t dare mess around with it in Gmail, though I’m sure it will be forced upon me. In it’s more “native” environment in Google+, Hangouts seems to function okay and is somewhat more visually appealing; via the Chrome extension, though… In the Chrome version, Hangouts appears as a rather minimalistic in color and design, always-on-top-overlaid box. [Always-on-top can be disabled; when not actively being used the box can be “minimized” to the lower right of the browser window.] Personally, I don’t care for a Chrome extension–Chrome has too large of a footprint in memory consumption and CPU cycles as it is; so why would I want to be forced into adding to this mess? Maybe if I were one of the few using a Chromebook…
A feature of it’s design that is common in all iterations, though varying in appearence, is the contact list–and it ain’t too pretty or intelligent, either. The contact list will display contacts that are used “the most often”–favorites, if you will–irregardless of their presense on Hangouts or any Google product. Contacting a person via Hangouts that is offline will–or should, rather, as I am speculating–deliver an “offline” message to that contact for later receipt; contacting a person who is not using Hangouts will result in the delivery of an invite via SMS, email, etc. The person receiving an invite will be taken to the Hangouts introduction/sign-up page, which will then eventually ask for a Gmail/Google+/Google Account sign-up, and so, and so, and so, and so… Remember that comment I made about it pushing Google+?
*sigh*
…so, I’ll either be downgrading my phone back to the old Talk app, or giving up on Talk altogether–likely the latter, where I foresee the old interface being blocked/killed. For now the old Talk apps and third party XMPP/Jabber clients still work, but I haven’t found anything anywhere saying that Hangouts is using XMPP, or whether there’s just some sort of translation gateway in place for the time-being. Fortunately, I can easily give-up on Talk–the only contact I have is my wife; it’s been that way since ’05–none of my other friends/family ever really drank the Google Kool-Aid…
…I’m just afraid of what will happen when Google adds Voice into this mess; I really don’t want to give up on another service…
[ADDENDUM]
…it looks like an XMPP translation doohickey might be what’s going on for now. According to an article by The Verge, Google did drop XMPP for the new Hangouts.
I wonder how long Google will keep the XMPP access available…
Google Play Books

Along with everything else going on at I/O yesterday–and continuing through to tomorrow–Google released an update to Play Books, that I think is pretty cool, too. The newest addition to Play Books is it’s ability to read EPUB and PDF. As stated in the “What’s new” section for Play Books’ info in the Play Store, one can simply add their documents via web at play.google.com/books/uploads. After a short wait for the document to upload–depending on your bandwidth and document sizes, of course–and a refresh of the library on your Android device, you’ll instamagically see the books that were uploaded; in my case, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet”.
The ability to save one’s own copies of books and read them via Play books is pretty slick; however, I do wish there were a few improvements…
It’d be nice to have a different interface for uploading these files; say via Google Drive. Instead of relying upon a browser based upload, I could just copy the files into a “special” folder in my Drive on my local machine.

It’d also be nice to see Play Books be able to read EPUBs and PDFs saved locally–or sent as attachments via whatever messaging/communication app/service on the Android device; currently Play Books will only read from the “cloud”.
…as it stands, however, the new update is something which I can take advantage of. Having these new abilities will enable me to easily upload books that I’ve collected for the children into their own accounts and have the content delivered “behind the scenes”; no longer relying upon third party apps.
[Until now, I had to connect their tablets and copy the documents over to their respective storage space, and then import each book individually into the reader app; there may have been an easier way–and likely was–but I hadn’t found it, yet.]
…I guess I need to see what other apps Google has updated, and what other fun stuff they have and will be announcing at I/O…