John Piper tweeted this by quoting his wife Noel: One of my daughter’s heroines honored by one of my husband’s fav songs sung by one of my fav singers.
I love this song so much and the way it is sung by Fernando Ortega. All in all, just a beautiful video. Go with God and lean on Jesus.
In the morning, when I rise
In the morning, when I rise
In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
When I am alone
When I am alone
When I am alone, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
When I come to die
When I come to die
When I come to die, give me Jesus
Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus
WordPress has announced that it has added RSSCloud to the millions of blogs it hosts? So what, you say? What it means is that blogs can now act as real-time discussions, the way Twitter works. That means that your feed reader, if it supports RSSCloud, will get updates instantaneously rather than every 15 or 60 minutes. The ReadWriteWeb blog puts it in perspective:
Real time updates could enable several things. Faster distribution of blog posts, more compelling conversations in real-time and a renewed timeliness for blogging vs. services like Twitter are all likely consequences. The list of possible technical developments on top of RSSCloud could be as open-ended as the developments enabled by the core of RSS.
RSS has made blogging viable by freeing readers of the requirement of visiting each site they are interested in. It has made podcasts subscribable. It has made wiki change notifications trackable outside the mess of the email inbox. It has made search a persistent action, instead of a one-off occasional delayed reaction. RSS is mixable, mashable, parsable, filterabile.
Now RSSCloud could add a real-time dimension to all of that. The paradigm just got a very big vote of support.
James 3:10 says: Blessing and cursing come from the same mouth. My brothers, these things ought not to be.
This video is really discouraging in a way because it is a reminder of how we can deliver a load of garbage with the same mouth we deliver praises, all within the same day. It is a hard thing to realize how far we fall short.
The 2008 Desiring God National Conference, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, dealt with how we use our words. Now a new book of essays based on that conference is available. Here is what the blurb at Desiring God says about it:
Words carry immeasurable significance: The universe was created with a word; Jesus healed and cast out demons with a word; rulers have risen and fallen by their words; Christians have worshiped through words of song, confession, and preaching. Even in our technological age, politics, education, business, and relationships center on words. Since the tongue is such a powerful force—for good or evil—we are wise to ask: What would homes, churches, schools, even the public square be like if we used words with Christian intentionality and eloquence?
The Power of Words and the Wonder of God seeks to answer this difficult question. In these chapters, derived from Desiring God’s 2008 national conference, John Piper, Sinclair Ferguson, and Mark Driscoll team with worship pastor Bob Kauflin, counselor Paul Tripp, and literature professor Daniel Taylor to help readers harness their tongues and appropriately command their silences for the glory of God and the ministry of the gospel.
We live in a charged age where our words can fly off our tongues (or fingertips) to a wide audience in a moment’s notice. The subject addressed in this book is important. We have a great and deadly tool at our disposal. We need wisdom in using it.
What does God not need? He doesn’t need proud people. He doesn’t need self-sufficient people. He doesn’t need people who are looking for their own glory. He does not need and so people like that are at odds with who God is.
This past Sunday afternoon, I had the joy of watching three people from my church be baptized. It is a wonderful thing to be a witness to this event in a Christian’s life because it points in a public way to the fact that God does a great thing in people’s live — he saves them — by first making them humble. John Piper, in his sermon from this past Sunday, says that humility “is the work of God under everything that makes all other good things in Christianity possible.” He gives just a few examples:
Faith. Would anyone depend on Christ as a needy, weak, and sinful person, if God hadn’t made him humble?
Worship. Would anyone earnestly make much of the worth of God, instead of craving to be made much of himself, if God hadn’t made him humble?
Obedience. Would anyone surrender his autonomy and submit obediently to the absolute authority of Scripture, if God had not made him humble?
Love. Would anyone seek the good of others at great cost to himself, if God hadn’t made him humble?
So, we are all in need of humility if we are to be of any good to God. The world, Piper reminds us, tells us that the best sort of courage is self-confidence. The humble person, however, is God-confident and lives his life not fearing man, but fearing God. Fearing men is a sign of pride, not humility. And because the humble person fears and loves God, that person works and is not passive. Remember what Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 15:10:
By the grace of God I am what I am . . . I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Because we are freed from the chains of self esteem and the concerns of the world, God allows us to be productive, creative, industrious people who do great things for God’s sake, not our own.
Rockstanding 
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