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| From 11.27-29.08 – Thanksgiving With Sheets-Grands |
We returned home just after Noon today from a couple days at my parents’ home in Middleburg, PA.
We had a blast.
Food, family, and fun. Not necessarily in that order!
The highlights:
We returned home just after Noon today from a couple days at my parents’ home in Middleburg, PA.
One of my youth sponsors here at Armbrust is an incredible video/graphics designer. He shot some video from our Night of 1,000 Thanks service last week and put together this highlight video from the event. I was blown away.
Enjoy:
Night of One Thousand Thanks from Todd Downs on Vimeo.
During some quiet time the other morning, I had a thought: “I think I know why ‘hell’ doesn’t worry people.”
I truly don’t think that the thought of hell is as much a factor in the realm of Christian evangelism as it once was.
Why?
Because we continually hear about a not-so-bad hell in our everyday language.
Think about it…
Every time you hear the following, think about what it does to your mental-understanding of hell:
“The Phillies had one hell of a season this year.”
“I’ve been going through hell-on-earth this month.”
“That experience was hell for me.”
Not only is the “worldly”, vulgar neighbor guilty of ‘dumbing-down’ hell, but even the sincere Christian brother or sister that labels their current or former life-experience as “hell” can be guilty of making hell much less the Biblical-example of eternal separation from God and much more a bad-week, a bad-month, or even a POSITIVE adjective for a sports-season.
Don’t be caught making hell less than what it is for someone who may very well be on the road to that very place. Remember to think before speaking.
Hell is a real, horrible place ([youversion]Revelation 20:11-15[/youversion]). People are going there everyday. I refuse to be guilty of making that truth less horrifying.
Read just minutes ago that if I was a pastor in India right now, the price on my head would be a measly $250.
From the article:
An All-India Christian Council spokesman said, “People are being offered rewards to kill, and to destroy churches and Christian properties. They are being offered foreign liquor, chicken, mutton and weapons. They are given petrol and kerosene.”
Read more here.
Had a quick conversation this morning with Scott Troyer via Skype. He was calling from his iPhone and a new Skype-app that he installed to make free calls to others with Skype from his WiFi-enabled phone! Cool, right?
During our conversation we both exclaimed that we wish MORE people were on Skype. More people we knew, that is. Skype currently tells me that there are over 14-million people CURRENTLY online, but my “contact list” only shows a minimal 7-friends. 7 of 14-million is not a very good ratio.
If you have yet to investigate all that Skype has to offer, know this:
We use Skype as our home-phone at home. It’s the cheap-alternative to any other VOIP phone service (think “Vonage”, etc.). We bought an adapter that allows us to connect our regular telephone up to the computer and make and receive calls directly from our two wireless handsets through our Skype-Out service. We also receive calls to our home number the same way.
Skype on your home computer also allows for video-conferencing or video-chatting. I talk maybe once every other week with a fellow youth pastor in another state face-to-face FOR FREE with Skype! A simple webcam on both computers allows us to actually look at each other during a conversation. We keep Ella in conversation face-to-face with her Garrett Grandparents in Indiana via Skype quite often (not as often as we should), too!
If you’re willing to give Skype a try, I’m willing to say at least “hello” to you! (I can’t promise much more as I am busy with numerous other things, too!)
Download and Skype for your computer and operating system at www.skype.com. Add “navets” to your contacts and give me a call! You’ll be a fan in no-time!
