Kansas landscape

This post is for all of our non-Emporian friends and family. Emporia is about 5 square miles of small town, suburbs, and strip malls. But outside of Emporia is pretty much farmland. So as promised, this is what it looks like.This is a field of soybeans just outside of town.This is obviously corn (I think the other major crop around here is wheat but that was already harvested in June). And yes, it is that tall. Sandy and I played hide and seek in there for hours...

Do you feel God's mercy?

This past couple of weeks, I have had the privilege to share the Gospel or attempt to share it with quite a few people. It has been humbling most of the time, but it has led me to appreciate God's mercy anew in my own life.

Reading Pastor John Piper recently and trying to share that glorious Gospel, reminded me of various Scriptures regarding what I deserve as I am a "child of wrath like the rest of mankind"(Eph 2:3), "under sin...accountable to God" (Rom 3:19), "hostile to God" (Rom 8:7), "having no hope and without God in the world" (Eph 2:12), destined to be cast into outer darkness where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt 8:12), and my future was the lake of fire where "the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest" (Rev 14:11).

Considering that Christ has rescued me from all of this because of His mercy, you'd think I'd be a little more joyful regardless of my circumstances which happen to be quite good these days. I was convicted even more when I read Jonathan Edwards saying this, "A man may meet with very great losses...his cattle may die...and all his goods consumed, and he may be brought from a comfortable living to a poor, low stricken state. This is very hard to bear, but alas, how little reason have such to complain if they do but consider how little this is, compared with that eternal destruction that we have been informed of."

Piper goes on to say this, "Ponder how you would react to things if you lived hour by hour in the heartfelt awareness that you are rescued from horrible death and eternal suffering, and that, in spite of deserving no help, you are lavished with mercy every day (even in the hard things) and willl be made perfectly and eternally happy in the age to come."

"Then add one more thing to your thinking. The one who rescued you had to die to do it, and he is the one Person in the universe who did NOT deserve to die...know your condition - the misery and the mercy. And let the horror from which you have been rescued, and the mercy in which you live, and the price that Christ paid, make you humble and thankful and patient and kind and forgiving. You have never been treated by God worse than you deserve. And in Christ you are treated ten million times better. Feel this. Live this."

Amen. If you need help feeling it, go to www.resolved.org and listen to CJ Mahaney's Resolved 2008 Session 11 on the bottom right of the page and listen to the scream of the damned. The misery is awful, but it makes the mercy all the more glorious.

The boys room and a potty training update

No, it's not LAX or the Emporia airport. But the boys do take off on many an adventure. And yes, Matthew does have a bed too. It's pretty much a mirror image on the other side.

And to protect the modesty of my little girl, I have not included a success picture of Emery. The potty training is going well. Many successes, just a few accidents, and no crying...by me - I think a first!

Potty training or a day on the town?

It was a day of contrasts today.While Emery and mommy worked on potty training...
Daddy and the boys saw a buffalo, deer, emus, llamas, a mountain lion, a bobcat, ducks, turtles, bald eagles, lemurs, prairie dogs at the very nice little Emporia zoo.
Not to mention we played on a tank...
And watched poor Luca Brasi as he slept with the fishes...

Lightning, thunder and tornadoes

The other day, we had a real strong set of thunderstorms and even a tornado warning. It made me really appreciate the following passage - "At this also my heart trembles, And leaps from its place. 2 "Listen closely to the thunder of His voice, And the rumbling that goes out from His mouth. 3 "Under the whole heaven He lets it loose, And His lightning to the ends of the earth. 4 "After it, a voice roars; He thunders with His majestic voice; And He does not restrain the lightnings when His voice is heard. 5 "God thunders with His voice wondrously, Doing great things which we cannot comprehend. 6 "For to the snow He says, 'Fall on the earth,' And to the downpour and the rain, 'Be strong.'" Job 37:1-6Now I didn't go storm chasing so this wasn't actual lightning from this storm but it's an old picture of a previous storm in Kansas that I found on line.

As the storm was just beginning, we talked about the above passage and how God's voice is like thunder to which Andrew replied, "Then lightning must be God's fingers and a tornado must be God's body spinning round and round!" Classic.

What do you boast about?

It is tempting for me as the husband of a beautiful wife, 2 funny boys, and a cutie pie baby girl to boast about my family. They are all precious to me.
But Gal 6:14 says, "But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." How easy it is to boast about God's wonderful blessings in this life, making more of the blessings than the Giver of those blessings.

It is easy for a proud man like myself to find something other than God to boast about. But Jeremiah 9:23-24 says, "Thus says the LORD, 'Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; 24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things.'" How much more incredible is it that the wrath of God was poured out on Christ for a proud and wretched sinner like me so that I might understand and know the Almighty God of the universe for eternity. Isn't that amazing and humbling? God is so good and worthy of boasting about.

Random observations

It has been 1 month to the day since I came to Emporia. For those of you who don't live here, I thought I'd describe some of the unique things I've noticed.

• No gun signs posted in many government buildings and banks. Though I noticed that the gun store didn't have this sign posted.
• So far, it has rained 1-2 times a week since I've been here, and they have been significant rains sometimes 2-3 inches. I think it has rained more in this month here than all of this past year in LA.
• Tornado siren testing goes off every Wed at 10am. They went off for an actual tornado once too. Sandy thought there were a lot of fire engines going by.
• How many times can we go to Wal Mart in 1 month? I think we're setting the record as we had been going there every day though now we've tapered down to every other day.
• But the strange thing is how empty Wal Mart is and it's the most crowded place in town I think. I never have to wait in line with more than 1 person ahead of me. And when I go to other stores in town, there is rarely more than 1-2 other customers. I feel like there's something going on somewhere else and no one told me about it.
• This is the friendliest place I've ever lived. Who hasn't said hi to me?
  
• When will the wind stop blowing? There is a constant breeze.

And one funny story from Andrew. After taking a shower before bed, he says, "An iceball melted in my ear!" It turns out that he had some water stuck in his ear.