Author: nick

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Random Bible Thoughts

My Community Group started doing the NOOMA video series with Rob Bell a few weeks ago. We are on the 4th video, called “Sunday.” This is the first video I ever saw of his when they first came out, and it is one of my favorites. In the video Rob talks about Jesus when he dealt with the Pharisees from Matthew 23. I’ve been thinking a lot about that since Sunday. Have you ever noticed how impatient Jesus seems when it came to dealing with the religious leaders of his time, yet he was extremely patient with those who were unbelievers. Check out these verses from Matthew 23 to see for yourself (13, 15, 16, 23, 33 All in one link). He called them hypocrites, Sons of Hell, Sons of Vipers, Snakes, Blind guides…just to name a few.

Now compare that to Jesus’ patience when he was being crucified on the cross, by the non-believers, his famous words were, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) That is one of many examples that I could use, others being the woman at the well, Nicodemus, and others. I don’t know what made me even make that comparison, however it is clear to see that there is a huge difference in his attitude towards the “religious leaders,” who knew better, and the non-believers, who were acting in ignorance, as Paul said he did when persecuting the church (1 Timothy 1:13). I wonder how angry Christ must get at some pastors, churches, church leaders, and Christians with the way they act, the way they treat their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and most of all those who do not yet believe in Christ? Continue reading “Random Bible Thoughts”

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Parenting 201 from Nick Carnes

Passing on Family Values: I try to teach my children something new every time Nicki leaves us alone. Father/Son time.

Yesterday, while Nicki was at the doctor I taught Tristan how to be Rambo and how to shoot a Machine Gun:

Aim at your Target
Show No Fear!

Shoot your enemy with a smile on your face…muscles flexing!
Yelling Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!

Celebrate the victory by shooting your gun in the air wildly. Yelling Aaaaaaahhhhh!
Tristan is a natural Rambo…he passes with an A+

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Parenting 101 from Pastor Pete Wilson

I’ve enjoyed participating in the blog community of Pete Wilson, Pastor @ Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN. He has had no greater post so far than his Parenthood post. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, and have committed to learning the lessons from these educational photos. Especially with a new baby on the way, a refresher never hurts. 😉

P.S. When you follow the link to Cross Point Church, check out their Plan B series video…it rocks! You can see more of their videos HERE.
(Ok, I’ll stop with the Cross Point Commercial so you can review the class…)

P.S. I could not stop laughing when I saw the Nursing Picture and the Testing Baby Bottle Picture! 😆

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Contentment

Bread SliceWe all do it! We read the Bible, sometimes so fast that when we are finished, we couldn’t tell someone what we just read. Growing up in a pastor’s home, in church, and in Christian school, I did a lot of that. It was never personal. I don’t really remember being taught to study the Bible for personal spiritual growth or to understand my God more, I only remember being taught to read it because it was the right thing to do…well that didn’t help me at all…nor did it help the 90% of my “Christian” School classmates that are either sitting in a chair in some church somewhere not using their gifts and talents for Christ, or they are off the Christian journey all together.

All of that to say, I was reading through Proverbs 30 yesterday and ran across this prayer from Agur. I have read Proverbs 30 before, but I never paid much attention to what it was saying: The entire prayer is great, but two areas stuck out to me, one I will blog about later after I have time to think about it, but here is the quote from verse 8b-9

“..Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.”

Talk about Contentment! “Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.” This is a hard prayer to pray. Especially when it is so much easier to pray “God give me more!” “God bless me more!” Agur was content to have his needs met. When I read this, I said ‘Wow!’ because it jumped out at me, but I have to be honest, this is hard to grasp. At first I didn’t even highlight the verse because I didn’t want to be responsible to live it. It may just be because I live in America and the one with the most money and the biggest toys win. Honestly, God has provided for all of my needs, but I wonder if I lived in a third world country where poverty is the daily expectancy, would I be content with ‘just enough?‘ Ouch, this one is tough…

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15 seconds

Last night I caught myself getting lazy.

I emptied an ice tray (that’s what poor people without automatic ice makers use) and was about to put it back into the freezer when I thought to myself how ridiculous I was. I get lazy a lot! I have a bad habit of dropping my clothes off at the end of the bed or in front of my closet. I was not raised this way, in fact I had a chore book as thick as a phone book that my dad was very thorough with checking.

So I decided to do the right thing and fill up the tray that I had just emptied. A funny thing happened, I needed ice this morning, and I had a full tray waiting on me.
Last night, I wondered how much time I was worried about wasting when I was about to put the tray back in empty, so I figured I would count, just to see how long it would take me to do the ‘right’ thing, I also recorded a couple of other things and their times:

  • Fill up ice tray, put in freezer – 15 seconds
  • Clean up Tristan’s mess with cloth, put in hamper – 12 seconds
  • Re-hang shirt I decided not to wear – 7 seconds
  • Plug up my cell phone instead of letting the battery die – 5 seconds

35 seconds actually saved me time and problems. I had ice when I needed it and did not have to wait a couple of hours, there was no mess on the floor to step in, my shirt was not making the room messy on the floor or on the bed, and I didn’t have to wait half the day to use my cell phone because it was charged. It pays to take the 15 seconds to do the right thing. Now I need to take the 20 minutes and clean up those areas I put off.

20 minutes or 15 seconds? What are you putting off that will cost you more time and problems in the end?