Prolific Writing Weekend...Sort of -- Dec. 8, 2008

 

I completed another article on the Golden Rule and I have an article that I just need to polish a bit and it will be ready for posting as well. This last article is in regards to how I think President-Elect Obama's presidency will go based on his messiah-like popularity.  You won't be able to see this article for a while since it is a Market Place article which means if it is chosen I will get paid! Really cool! If I do not get chosen, it should be available for your viewing pleasure in a few days.

Check out the Golden Rule missive and let me know what you think. It was a fun write!

Bye!

God's BIG Quiz -- Dec. 5, 2008

One last post for today...

If you were to die today and stand before the Creator of Heaven and Earth and He should ask you one question, "Why should I let you into My Heaven?" How would you respond?

If you were to die today, do you know for sure that you would go to Heaven?

When God created the heavens and earth and everything in them, it was just as He wanted them. Things were perfect and the people He created literally walked with Him in fellowship.

But God did not create robots that would obey His every command and make His very wishes their commands, He created people with a will, the ability to choose, choice, freewill, if you will. They could choose to love and follow Him or to reject Him and disobey the rules He had set forth. Choice is the only way to prove love. Is it really love if you do not have a choice? If you are forced to "love" someone or something, is it really love? No, of course not! God built us with the ability to chose.

We took that choice and we rejected God, turned out backs on Him to go our own way. Thus, sin came into the world in which we all are partakers.

God is perfectly holy, we cannot even begin to comprehend what this really means but He is purity incarnate. This means that deviating in the slightest way, a "white lie" even, totally violates His holiness and condemns us to eternal separation from Him, or Hell. Think about this, one tiny, "innocent" white lie condemns us to eternal separation form God! If we move beyond a little lie...WOW! No excuses! God is perfect and demands perfection to gain Heaven. Who can attain to this level? No one can! This is bad news! Really bad news! How do we answer His question? The only answer, in and of ourselves is, we do not deserve to enter Heaven. We deserve Hell.

End Game!

Wait! A light! A light shines in the distance! What can it be? It is filled with hope, with good news! What is it? What is the good news?

God does demand perfection. There is no way around that, but He also knows we cannot attain to His standards so He made a plan. He Himself would pay the price He required of us and not only would He pay the price but He also would give it to whoever desired to have it.

Did you see that! He paid the required price and He then gives it to whoever wants it! What does this mean?

God knew we could not attain to His expected standard of perfection so He sent Jesus, both man and God, to pay the price. Listen to this:

Jesus died for sins and rose again the third day. Ten words that say it all! The good news!

Jesus did the work and paid the price for your sins and my sins and all He requires in return is that you trust Him, that His payment is sufficient to satisfy God's holy requirements and there is nothing more required. He paid it all and He offers you Heaven in return for your trust. Is that too much to ask in return for all He has done for you?

If you, having read through this, see your need for a Savior and you trust Jesus now that you have seen what He has done for you, tell Him so right now. He is with you and can hear you even if you tell Him in the quietness of your heart.

You could say something like this: "Jesus I know I am a sinner and I am in need of a Savior. I trust that what You did for me by dying on the cross and being raised the third day is sufficient payment for my sins. I am now trusting You for my salvation."

That was prayer! But it was not the prayer that saves you. The prayer is simply telling God you are now trusting Him. It is trust in Jesus and Jesus alone that saves you.

If you have trusted Jesus for your salvation today tell someone else so that they can trust in Him too!

If you have trusted Christ you can now answer both of God's questions with confidence and assurance! What peace this will bring into your life!

I would also love to hear from you if you took this most important of steps today. It would e a great encouragement to me to hear your story. Use the "Contact Me" link on the right to send me an email if you trusted Jesus today! Also I would be happy to try and answer any questions you might have regarding all of this information so please feel free to contact me.

The Mood has Struck! -- Dec. 5, 2008

Today, as noted in my earlier blog, I am up early and I have been been blessed with a desire to write, so you get a second posting today.

God is so gracious. I have been brooding for a long time how to insert myself more into my children's lives but as I thought of all of the things I could do with each one it seemed boring even to me so how could I expect them to enjoy the time?

This took me to a place that all of us should go when faced with a nagging problem (The first place for any and everything in all reality!): prayer. For a long time I have agonized how to reach out to my children and leave a legacy of something more than "Whose Line is It Anyway" and "Wife Swap". TV was becoming the legacy my children would inherit. A worthless, time-wasting legacy! (I DO watch TV and can watch too much also but I have been trying diligently to cut out some TV time, with a degree of success, I might add!)

Finally, the week before Thanksgiving I decided I would just start something with Logan and see how it went. Here is what we do:

1) Watch a movie together (I KNOW! It's TV but that is not all we do! Pay attention, now!)       

2) We have a 30-60 minute Bible study and talk about how to apply it to our lives. This has been a terrific time! I am actually getting to know my son! He is a fascinating person! You all should get to know him!

Through this we actually have mission statement for ourselves and we are going to keep each other accountable to our mission statement!

Here is the mission statement Logan and I came up with ( I want to add one more part but for now it helps us to focus): "To love God, love people, and do the best we can in everything we do." Next week we are going to flesh out what those points mean. It is really cool! You might say it's a "mission from God"! :-)

3) We play a game that requires thinking. Chess, Othello, Mind Trap, Bible Trivia Pursuit, etc.  I want Logan to start using his God-given brain to think and this is partly how I am going about doing this. I also do not allow "I don't know" as an answer to the questions I ask him when we're doing our Bible study. This encourages him to think outside the box and it has worked! He really puts forth a brilliant effort to answer my questions! I am inspired and I think we are both growing! I am really loving this time with him! It is so cool! I praise the Lord for it because He has answered my prayer, at least in part.

4) I want to incorporate exercise into this as well but last night we ran out of time.

Now, as most of you know I have a daughter too. She is Alyssa and she is 16. She is not only 16 but she is active in school. She is not only active in school but she also has a job, a real job. She not only has a real job bit she has friends, friends not only from her school but from other schools as well. I think you get my point, she is very busy! This is daunting to my desire to spend some time with her too. I realize it won't work to do the same things with her as I do with Logan but I want to do something.

Prayer. Prayer. Prayer. If God gave me an answer for Logan He will give me an answer for Alyssa too. It will be different and not as much time in one sitting but it will be a good thing.  I'm praying, Alyssa! This means God will give me an answer! Stop rolling your eyes, young lady! You can't run from God's plan! tee hee!

Well, I am done for now. I need to pray and get a dose of God's word before I run off to the office. Maybe even some breakfast in the mix.

God is so gracious! In my next post I will tell you more about this Guy!

Bye!

A Real Wake Up Call -- Dec. 5, 2008

It is currently 0500. For you non-military types, it's 5:00 AM. Note the AM part. It is early and, yes, I am up. This is not by choice but when one is on-call one can be summoned at any moment by the magic of the pager. Its heart-stopping, nerve-shaking tones drags one from the deepest, most pleasant dreams into the harsh cold reality of Friday morning! But no matter. Now that I am up I decided that I would stay up since the alarm was set to go off at 5:45 anyway.

Speaking of Friday morning, in just under two hours I will be off of call for another four weeks. If you care to look on the calendar this puts my next call rotation during our visit to Ames for our Bowman side of Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, this time of year becomes hard for me to focus at work. It's almost like vacation in the fact that I know I have several days coming up in the near future where I will be off for various holiday festivities and I find myself at odd times counting the minutes. However, the boss has had a great number of extras for me to be working on this past year so the times I get to spend counting the minutes (in these, now rare moments, minutes actually feel like hours! I wonder if this is a phenomena akin to wind chill--it says it's -3 degrees below zero but it feels like -120! We could call it..."On and ON" as in, "This day is dragging "on and on!" The On and On factor today is 2. For every minute you stare at the clock today, it feels like two hours.") is considerably lessened!

In reality, I don't mind being up early. When everyone is in bed it is a lot more peaceful. At night you can get a lot of traffic and even just the feel in the air is of unsettled chaos. But in the early hours of the day, once you get out of bed, the entirety of life seems a bit more peaceful and rested. Once I manage to pry the sleep-coated eyelids open and the heart starts beating again, the early mornings are really a nice time.

(It must be really cold outside, the furnace has kicked on three times in the last 30 minutes. That is such an encouragement to go out and go to work! Brrrr! Or as Alyssa used to say, "BOOOO it's code!") tee hee!

So long for now. Stay warm!

Bye!

Interesting Writing Site -- Dec. 4, 2008

 

If any of you out there would like to boost your writing check out this site:

http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html

I just discovered it and it looks cool. I have not tried it yet but I plan on trying it and I will let you know what I discover. Sometimes we need a push, I ALWAYS need a push, so this could prove to be a good tool...

I'll let you know!

Thanksgiving -- Nov. 26, 2008

I wanted to shoot out a short missive before things get moving for this holiday celebration.

I start call this weekend which, historically, should not be too bad and now much easier since my father-in-law now has a high speed connection to the Internet.

Football is the usual fare on Thanksgiving afternoon so I may pop out the old laptop and work on a article or two. I have an idea or two for an article that I may try to play around with. I really need to get more articles out on Helium. I still have the eight I originally wrote and I have earned a whole 17 cents so it's about time I add to my vast fortune!

The Chicago branch of the Bowman clan will be in town for Thanksgiving this year and G'Pa B will be coming to town for Turkey day too! We will have a full house.

On a sadder note, the Bowman family will be having one of her "firsts" this Thanksgiving. The first without G'Pa A. For my family in losing Grady, the "firsts" were the hardest part and I do not imagine it will be any different for the Bowman clan. It is sad for me...

Though it is more traditional to reflect on the past year closer to Christmas time I'm feeling a bit nostalgic this morning so I will just take a peek backwards.

There is no escaping the fact that it was a tough year for the East Iowa Larson branch this past year, and as I look back it occurs to me that  I really never want to face another year like that again. On the other hand, it is the tough times that force us to look to God who waits for us to call on Him. He answers prayer, too! Oh, it is true that the way He answers those prayers may not be the way you would like for Him to answer them but He is faithful.

When I see all the times this past year that He took part in our pain and brought us to see Him in action, it was a real blessing in spite of a poor heart attitude. In fact, in the darkest times of the past year He provided. It is incredible to look back and see where He intervened.  Right now? Right now God has granted to us some relief. I would not say a mountain top time but the stress is of the normal, holiday type and not manufactured, as it is when you look ahead and worry about what might happen. No wonder God calls worry sin. It really comes down to a lack of trust in His provision.

No, it has not been a fun year but it is very good to look back and see how God has provided but I need to take what I have learned and remember it for the future. Because even though God has granted to us a reprieve from a difficult year, He also promises that this life is hard and there will be ups and downs. But when we learn to see God's hand in those times, how He moves to help us, as He promised He would,  we then experience a growth in faith and, if we have gained any wisdom form our past, are quicker to turn to Him when the next "tunnel experience" comes our way.

Have a God filled Thanksgiving! We all have a tremendous amount to be thankful to God for this year.

Bye!

Late Night Reflections -- Nov. 21, 2008

It's Friday night and my house is quiet. Kim is in bed watching the news. Alyssa is still working. She closes tonight so she won't be home until after midnight. Logan is at the first-ever Junior High Retreat at Camp Wapsi. This leaves me me in a quiet place for a while.

I'm not overly interested in going to bed and I really want to write but my attempts to get a Helium article out have crashed into a smoldering heap. Not discouraged but still needed to bang out some words, I'm turning to the faithful blog. Where I don't have to have a real plan but I still need to make some sense since there are some folks who do read this thing!

I made a plan to spend time with Logan at least once a week. A time where we can look at God's word, talk, play a game and perhaps some other activities just to hang out together.

I have wanted to do something for a long time but I have always talked myself out of it because I did not think I could compete with PS 2. But after praying about this and having been encouraged in Men's Fraternity, I decided to just do it and an interesting thing happened: we had a great time! I am now looking forward to doing this more often.

I want to do something with Alyssa too, but it will not be quite as intensive since she is much busier, but I still think a regular time with her at lunch or some other little activity will prove to be a real blessing. It sure was with Logan! It was most encouraging and I am so grateful to the Lord that He was able to talk me into it.

When I was still at home, around Logan's age, I did not appreciate the talks I had with my folks. Since that time; however, it has become a real joy to spend time talking with my parents. I do not feel I have missed anything. I do wish I could get over to see them more often but that doesn't work out too well at this phase of life.

It is interesting how your perspective changes on certain things as you grow older and mature. I can;'t say that there are many things I still have the same perspective on that I did 25 years ago. I know that career-wise I certainly have evolved.

Well, my teeth are feeling fuzzy which means I need to brush, and I think I hear my bed's siren song, so I will sign off for now.

Have a wonderful weekend and I hope to be back on-line next week!

Bye!