Nothing Can Stop...THE BLOG!

“INDESCRIBABLE…
INDESTRUCTABLE…
NOTHING CAN STOP IT!...THE BLOG!”

The text on the icon to the left may be a little too small for you to read, but it’s a shot of the original marquee poster for the classic 1958 SciFi/thriller THE BLOB, only here the “B” has been replaced with a “G” so that it says…NOTHING CAN STOP THE BLOG!

I want to thank everyone for not skipping a beat yesterday, and picking right back up with the new format. This cyber-community is really very cool. But my reasons for re-tooling it were not just about all the obnoxious religious stuff (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it). I can deal with Pharisees…I’ve been doing that throughout my entire ministry…it’s just that so many people were suddenly logging on and completely missing the point, that I realized I needed to communicate a little differently.

But the other reason is really about something else, entirely. If you recall, in the previous incarnation of BLOGINTHENOW I talked about the whole thing with Barack Obama defending himself concerning the Muslim accusations (since then someone from Hilary Clinton’s campaign has even posted pictures of him in Arabic garb)…but the point was that I was inspired by his effective self-defense, and, as a result, decided to become proactive, and aggressively deal with falsehoods that had been written about me on-line (particularly the ones that immediately appear when you type my name into search engines).

But here’s the thing…I don’t know what has happened to me in the last three weeks, but for some reason I just genuinely don’t care about all that stuff any more. Perhaps I just got it all out of my system by having my say about each accusation and/or rumor…or maybe it was enough that my posts were on the internet for the days that they were, and nothing more needs to be said about it…who knows?...but I’m just really, really over it…so much so, that I don’t even want any of that compost stinking up the place here at this wonderful site!

Since I started this blog, some of the other blogs that have discussed me have disappeared, (one of them continued to talk about me, but the blog host changed the spelling of my name after reading what I wrote here to avoid being picked up by Google or Yahoo)…but none of that even matters to me any more.

But it’s not even just about that kind of stuff. You know, there has been so much public scandal (all documented on-line) involving my extended family over the last several years, that I can’t even feel embarrassed by it anymore. I’ve felt all the shame and humiliation over it that I can possibly feel, so I have to just let it go and be free of it now. I have no control over any of that drama, so there's nothing more for me to say about it. And there’s been so much written about my oldest son’s outrageous band, some (if not most) of which is true, that I can’t worry about that anymore, either. He’s my son, and I love him unconditionally. In the same way...nothing more to say about that. And whatever labels religious people may have attached to me and then have written about, I’ve basically asked for…you can’t be intentionally provocative, and then be upset when people are provoked by you! So…“sticks and stones”…or “no weapon formed against me will prosper”…or “whatever”…it doesn’t matter, and it’s all good! There's just nothing more that I can or need to say about any of that, regardless of how it may have affected me up until now.

I’m still going to keep this site going in a certain direction just to avoid the hassle of having so many imperceptive people feeling obliged to put their two cent’s worth in about unnecessary stuff…but there’s really a bigger picture, and that is that this blog needs to be positive and joyful and full of light, and abundant with fruit from the Tree of Life!

For some reason today I was thinking about how the cross looks like the “plus” sign (+), and it occurred to me how few people there are who present Jesus to the world in a positive light. But my Jesus isn’t the Christ of the “Thou shalt nots”…He’s the Lord of the SHALLS (You SHALL love the Lord, your God…you SHALL love your neighbor as you love yourself). So for everyone who has ever written or said something unkind or uninformed about me, I say, through the power of the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” and I also forgive them and I bless them, because I am not overcome with evil, but I overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). This blog is a table spread for me in the presence of my enemies, where my head is anointed with oil, and my cup runs over!

Today Robyn started posting some big crowd shots on the CITN site (www.churchinthenow.org), and as I was looking at them a little while ago I just thought about how blessed I am, and how much I have for which to be thankful, and how much I have for which to look forward.

Life is good…really good…so that’s what BLOGINTHENOW will be about from now on…and that is why NOTHING CAN STOP…THE BLOG!!!

Have a great day!

HAPPY LEAP YEAR!

Hey, everyobdy! Welcome back!

As you can see, I’ve revamped a little. Unfortunately, a lot of great stuff got deleted in the clean-up, but it had to be done. Please don’t assume, if your posted comments and responses got erased, that it was because they weren’t appreciated, because they were (and are!) The overwhelming positive response to this blog has been amazing, and there are definitely some great thinkers out there. Some of you I know, some of you I think I know, and some of you I’m sure that I definitely don’t know, but I hope that you’re all still on board.

The original playlist is back, but it shuffles now, so each time that you log on you will hear a different tune. There’s a little bit of everything here (as most of you know, my tastes are rather eclectic, to say the least)…worship music, gospel, rock, pop, country, spiritual, rap, folk, R&B, broadway, classical…both Christian and secular…all positive…sort of the soundtrack of my life.

Each song is meaningful and uplifting to me in some way, and I hope that you enjoy the whole collection. I certainly enjoyed compiling it for you. You can stay logged on and have hours of music, or you can turn down the volume on your computer while you blog, or even pause the player. I welcome your feedback on any of the songs.


Hey, did you know what every year that is not a leap year is called a “common year”?

From Wikipedia: A leap year (or intercalary year) is a year containing one or more extra days (or, in case of lunisolar calendars, an extra month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronised with the astronomical or seasonal year. For example, February would have 29 days in a leap year instead of the usual 28. Seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of full days, so a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would over time drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year which is not a leap year is called a common year.

So, if every non-leap year is a common one, then a year like this one is apparently UNCOMMON! That is prophetically significant for me today. I’m expecting great...UNCOMMONLY GREAT...things in 2008! How about you?