I know much is said about Rick Warren and there are verying opinions of him especially in conservative circels.  However I praise God for the prayer he delivered today.  Here it is both by video and the text

Almighty God, our Father:
Everything we see, and everything we can’t see, exists because of you alone.
It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory.
History is your story.

The Scripture tells us, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.

Now today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the United States.

We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.

Give to our new president, Barack Obama,

the wisdom to lead us with humility,
the courage to lead us with integrity,
the compassion to lead us with generosity.

Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders.
Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans–united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all.

When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you–forgive us.

When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone–forgive us.

When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve–forgive us.

And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ.

Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all.

May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet.

And may we never forget that one day, all nations–and all people–will stand accountable before you.

We now commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.

I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, ‘Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus—who taught us to pray:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,

for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.

And Here is the video

Today I thought  I would highlight some things from chapter 2 of Why Guys Need God.  This is part of a series I thought I would start so I will try to blog daily about some things I got of reading the book.  

While reading chapter 2 there was a a section that talked about courage.  Many times we think of courage as the Rambo type personality however in reality that is not what courage is about at all.  Here is a quote from the book

Courage is staying faithful to my wife as she is, not as I wish here to be.  Doing my job well as it is, even if it is not what  I wish it to be.  Loving my friends, my parents, and my kids all in the same way.  To be courageous is to resist the sometimes overwhelming temptation to escape, pretend, and fantasize.  pg.29

Biblical courage – true masculine courage-isn’t simply doing the glorious thing but also doing the ordinary, mundane, boring, decidedly inglorious stuff of life. pg. 30

I am not sure what has caused us to define courage is such a different way.  many times as men we think courage is that of being some sort of muscle bound person that takes garbage from no one.  However, is this really courage?  How many times do we see men being men of courage.  Not courage as the world defines it but courageous biblically not afraid to live out what God’s word tells us.  I know I need some work in this area of courage.  I pray God will help me be that man of courage that I need to be for my family, and friends, and those that know me.  

However the book does not stop there it goes on to point out some other things that really hit me hard.

Selfishness works against love, freedom, and courage, convincing me that my own wants, needs, fears, and preferences come first.  It takes God-filled courage to lay those things down for the sake of another. pg.33

We were told early and often to “quite being such a baby.”  But we cannot be the strong rescuers of others until we see that we ourselves are in need of rescue.  We cannot be strong until we admit that we are not strong.  Until we are broken, our lives will be self-serving, self-reliant, ad self-absorbed. pg.34

This totally blew me away.  How often allow my own selfishness to take control.  I want others to see love through me and to have that “God-filled” courage.

I have not been able to update for the last few days because my hard drive crashed on the Mac.  I know it is hard to believe but it is my second hard drive in 2 years and dumb me never backed it up.  I took this time to do some more reading and finished one book and started another.  Thanks to my buddy Chris Baker.  He bought me both Why Guys Need God and Death By Church both by Mike Erre.  

I thought I would take a some days ahead and blog about some of the things I have learned while reading these books or just use some quotes.  I love to read and seeing what other have to say and these books have been great.  Alot of times I will grab a quote and blog about that.  So tonight I will blog about the first book and some stuff from the first chapter.

Chapter one is “In the Image” one of the first things that struck me as funny and sad was a story about his Youth Pastor.  Funny because I did something similar, and sad because it shows the state of some of our churches.

I remember our youth pastor getting fired because he dared to take his suit off during the sermon (he was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt underneath)  to make the point that God isn’t particularly impressed with our external appearance.

I am glad that I did not get fired when I did something similar to this though it did ruffle a few feathers.  Most of those that listened to the message ddi not get it because they were so stuck on the fact that I was in the pulpit and not wearing a suit.  The highlight was probably the fact that and elderly lady towards the front said while I was taking the suit off “take it off”!  She was an awesome lady.  However when I think about this I cant help to wonder why a church could be so caught up in there appearance ant not feel that this was wrong.  I am sure there is more to the story than this.

Here is another quote from chapter one.

We do not know what it means to be masculine.  If increased occurrences of abuse, immorality, divorce, homosexuality, and suicide are reliable indicators, then for all of our  correctness and gender discussion, we are not better off.

Often times we do not really know what it is to be masculine.  In some of the coming chapters the book laid out some great things that I will share at a later time.

MIAMI — Back in July, in a ballroom in a Birmingham, Ala., hotel during Southeastern Conference media days, a reporter asked Tim Tebow the following question:

“I don’t mean to sound cynical, but between winning the national championship and winning the Heisman, saving the world in the Philippines and all, did you ever, like, sneak a cigarette when you were in high school? Do you ever do anything wrong? Do you feel like everything off the field is sort of on cruise control for you?”

My immediate reaction: Lord help us. Sporting America has become too jaded to appreciate Tim Tebow. We’ve been Marion Jonesed and Mark McGwired and Barry Bondsed into suspecting there must be a dark side to the Florida quarterback, who does so many things right on and off the football field. We roll our eyes at his “saving the world in the Philippines,” when how many among us have bothered to go across town to help the poor, much less across the globe the way Tebow has? We’ve been conditioned not to trust a virtuous athlete when he’s right in front of us.

Tebow’s reaction was better. His response, in part:

“You know, everybody, they can look and say how easy it is. But it’s definitely not that easy. The difference is ’cause not many people want to wake up at 5, go through workouts, go speak to young kids, go back, eat lunch, go to class, go to tutoring, go speak at a prison at night, come back. I mean, more people would do those things; they just don’t want to sacrifice.

“You know, there’s a lot of leaders out there. But, unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of good ones. So that’s always been my dream and my goal, is to be someone like Danny Wuerffel was to me, to be someone that a parent can say, ‘Hey, this kid did it the right way.’ That’s always been my dream and my goal more so than winning a trophy or winning a championship.

Read The Rest Here