Trying to follow

SURRENDER: Matthew 20:26-28- “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

-fluid & organic with continual movement
-interdependence
-there are no sacred cows
-there’s no length we won’t go to in order to connect people with Jesus
-ain’t no mountain high, ain’t no valley low
-adapting & empowering not controlling
-we’ll put God first no matter what, anything is going to submit to that
-leave the 99 to get the one
-humble, humility, humble submission
-doesn’t mean there isn’t any structure but God is the structure
-show us the best structure that will unleash the full potential of your spirit
-both structure and spirit are always present together; one is never absent of the other

I’ll be honest this sounds more like a list of catch phrases then any deep practical thoughts on Surrender. The word “surrender” is often seen in a negative light, as it is commonly considered as “giving up” or “quitting.” In our day of constant wars the thought of idea that our troops would “surrender” seems weak and cowardly.
Interesting too that the Bible verse referenced above does not even use the word “surrender” instead it’s talking about serving. My personal thought is this idea of surrender makes no sense, unless seen in light of Love. Christ surrendered his power as God and became a human. Husbands surrender their wants and desires to their wives. Like a little child who wants their way, we must surrender our ambitions to a parent who knows what is best for us. Maybe surrender is an out dated word though?
I’ll be honest Surrender does not sound like a easy thing, and it certainly does not seem like an enjoyable thing. It really is a giving up of something.

I guess I see it as odd that a main tenent of our belief system can be this idea of “surrender” and yet we still look so similar in all that we do to our unbelieving neighbor who has no desire to surrender anything?
I know there’s that song “I surrender All” but when besides the song can one declare something like that? Can you make that statement while eating out with your church friends? Can you say you surrendered when your buying that new gadget, when your living in your comfy house, while driving in your luxury car? Can you say you’d surrendered all when enjoying the latest concert, taking a vacation cruise, or watching the game?

It’s a good song and all, but do you know anyone who is really “Surrendering All?”

So, thanks to a little storm last night, lightening struck and shorted out our modem. Fortunately, the guy came by today and fixed it. Turns out our old modem sucked big time.
Now I realize we’ve gone almost a year with internet going at about half the speed we’d been paying for. It was decently fast before, but now it’s crazy fast.

Anyways, sorry for the delay this is going to cause in my writing for the week. Hope I catch up quick.

I’m up late trying my hardest to rid myself of stuff. My friend, Bryan, reminded me that you really do “live” with your stuff. It’s me, my wife and our stuff.
And I have entirely too much stuff. There are some big ticket items to get rid of (including about 100 t-shirts) and I just need to do it ASAP. I’ve posted a lot on Craigslist, hoping to make a few bucks in the process, but then there is this economics lesson nagging at me.

Once you have spent money on something and you own it, that price/value is a sunk cost. If I paid $5 a shirt for the 100 shirts I thought I’d sell at a profit, no matter what happens I’ve already spent that $5, it’s sunk. So, when I have to get rid of them I’m desperately trying to make my $5 back, but the truth is that cost is gone, and their value is only going to be what someone will actually pay for them. If I can’t sell them for $5 a piece it’s silly for me to just keep them because I don’t want to “lose money” on the deal, I already did lose money.

Thank you economics class.
So how much will you pay for these shirts?

In similar fashion to my last Tech Friday post we are sticking with cool Firefox Bookmarks. Zach asked me to do a driving directions one, rather then a yellow pages one.
So, without further ado here is the way to easily look up directions from your house to anywhere else.

Here’s how to do it (Sorry this is a bit more complicated then I’d like). The Code Below is what you want to edit to create your bookmark. First just add a new bookmark to Firefox (you can bookmark this page). Then go to that bookmark and right click and choose properties. Now you can name it what ever you want. Then your going to paste in the code below (after you’ve edited all the sections: STREETNUMBER, STREETNAME, etc.) into the “Location” box. Finally your going to pick your keyword (mine is dir), and then click okay.
http://www.google.com/local?f=d&hl=en&saddr=STREETNUMBER+STREETNAME+LANEAVENUE+CITY+STATE+ZIPCODE&daddr=%s&om=1

That’s it. Now anytime you want to look up directions you just go up to the address bar (easiest is to hit ctrl+t to open a new tab) and type “dir orlando, fl” or “dir wheaton, il” and your search is done.

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