Rich also has a link to a great post on Google Blogoscope pointers on good blogging style. The layout of Rich’s own blog is a great example of how to “spruce up” your blog with graphics, fonts, and neat little tools like showing an executive summary of posts on your home page with links to the full post that even include an estimate of how long it will take you to read that post…!

Looking at the beautiful layout of Rich’s pages shame me terribly and have already added to my determination to update the look and feel of this page just as soon as I can…!

Enjoy…! It is well worth the clicks to check Rich out…!”

Every “camp” of Christian believers needs to be a big part of what is being said in the world today. In our silence, the world becomes filled only with darkness from the other side. Yet Christ has made His body of many parts, and we each have an important and vital perspective to share on what God is doing in the here and now, as well as what He has planned for all who love Him.

Thanks for your blog and for the things you share with folks via the Internet. God’s best.
Jim

Unfortunately, too many Christian bloggers are busy sniping and fisking each other to do much good in that arena.

Rich
BlogRodent

Thanks for commenting!

I suppose I hadn’t thought of blogging as a calling, either, but it only makes sense to me now to see it that way. Otherwise it’s a mere pass-time or hobby. Anyone who is equipped and gifted to write should do so in God’s service, just as anyone who is equipped to fix motors should do so in God’s service. That doesn’t mean writing religion-only blogs or servicing only Christian-owned small-block motors, but it does mean doing whatever you do in such a way that we feel God’s pleasure, like Eric Liddell said in Chariots of Fire,

“I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel God’s pleasure.”

Like you, I fall short of my own goals. But at least I desire God’s handiwork to be displayed in my life, whether blogging or jogging, and I hope I’m yielded enough for that to come through.

Hey, Lou,

You could never truly commit verbicide, I know. Shucks, you could simply repost some of your more lucid moments from your email discussions and still have enough to fill a book. And that’s just the lucid stuff! You could fill a whole ‘nuther book with Beaudreaux, Thibodeaux, and Jeanfreaux’s antics.

Jim,

I agree, he leads us. Any of my ponderings of the implications of “grasp” and dunamis should not be confused with thinking that the Holy Spirit is merely a tool or a source of power like my wall-sockets are. The power flows from the relationship and is blocked by pride.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

After blogging for a grand total of two-weeks, I was thinking of…well, I was considering verbal suicide…deleting my blog site. I know…deletion is the easy way out. After reading your post…maybe I can make it for another week.  Keep up the great work!

Blessings,

lou

Luke wrote in Acts 9:22 that Paul “grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.”

I think this “dunamis” (Greek, from which we get “dynamo,” “dynamite,” “dynamic,” and so forth) empowerment is both occassional, continual, and incremental. It’s occassional because we see contexts in the NT where “power” is given to do certain things, but those are special occassions: healing, miracles, prophecy, and so forth. Continual in that as long as the Holy Spirit is present (and he is always present for the believer), one would presume that he empowerment for witness and deed is also present. The question is whether we are able to “grasp” that power. (The Greek in Acts 1:8 uses the future tense of “lambano,” which is usually translated “shall receive,” but “lambano” has an active sense of apprehension, it’s not a passive reception. It’s often translated “take” or “grasp” as well as “receive.”) And it’s in that sense, I believe, that the empowerment promised by the Holy Spirit, while always available, is not always grasped.

What we see in Acts 9:22, with Paul actively defending the gospel, is a man who is reaching, ever reaching, for greater empowerment. And that empowerment for witness grew.

From 1 Corinthians 12-14, Paul describes in greater detail the outworkings of the charismata that are the consequences of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Paul makes it clear that “the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet,” and that one has some control over the exercise of the spiritual gifts.

Clearly, this empowerment by the Holy Spirit is the “dynamic” source of the charismata. However, we are the willing agents of that power, and we must willingly diminish our own power that His may flow more freely. As Paul wrote to the Romans, it is the Holy Spirit that pours his love into our hearts … and love is the greatest charismata of all. And as we pour out his love it must be continually replenished within us.

The initial result of the outpouring in Acts was praise and worship. As Christ promised in John 14, the Holy Spirit always directs our attention back to Jesus. I think that if our attention is wandering away from Christ, his work, and his majesty, we are either not in tune with the Holy Spirit or we have effectively shut him out.

To maintain access to that empowerment, then, we must walk in the Spirit, we must maintain our focus on Christ, we must keep his word in our hearts. We must be “living sacrifices,” the kind of sacrifice that stays on the altar. That’s the kind of worship we are called to, and that’s the kind of life God empowers.

At least, that’s what I think in this wee small hour of the morning. Ask me in five hours, my answer might be different. :: grin ::

BlogRodent