Monsterlizard - Born Again

Heather just uploaded our first YouTube videos.  Maybe now we will take more movies. 

Here is Honey Bear singing Old McDonald.  Honey Bear told us, “This song I sing when I am pooping.”

 Here are the girls being their cute selves

It is amazing what one cannot do when their intentions are great.  I have not posted in a long time, I have every excuse imaginable and none of them are valid.  I have decided that before I can know what God wants me to do, I need to understand his Word.  I have never read the Bible cover to cover and I feel called to do that.

I found a place to help facilitate that http://www.sbcpray.net/biblepathway/welcome.asp and am pround to say I am in the middle of Numbers now.  I have been reading for 17 days and have completed 51 days worth of reading.

I will post things that I feel lead to post as I read, but my main focus is just to read.  Please pray for me to finish this year.

I have tried a few Bible message boards, but something doesn’t quite feel right with all the ones I tried.  They are usually really moderated (for good reason because there are people who would destroy their communities if not moderated).  The problem is, you cannot engage in discussion that goes against the doctrine of the the leaders of the board.

I have more and more issues taking someone else’s interpretation on Scripture as the only interpretation.  This is what the Roman Catholic Church did for centuries and I don’t think that was the intention of the Bible.  I think it is the Word of God for all.  I have searched for a place where it can be freely discussed (in a Christian manner) online and have not found it, so I decided to set out to build such a place.

I started looking for a web service that I could use to read and search the Bible.  The first place I found was the publishers of the English Standard Version (ESV) translation   I actually use the ESV on this blog to show verses for further study.  I was worried with their terms and conditions when it comes to the number of queries and use.

Then I found BibleWebService and it was just about perfect.  However, this is a service by an individual that could go down at any time.  But, this wonderful person made the source code open source.  I have since converted it to use MySQL instead of SQL Server and have started testing it.

My plan from here is to create a place that anyone can lookup and discuss the Bible.  They can talk about their interpretation and back it up with scripture.  Others can join in on the discussion and state their views.  My hope is that through free open discussion, light will be shown to all.

I have been reading and posting in bibleforums.org for a few weeks now.  It is a great message board, and if you have time I recommend giving it a look.  Today I was looking around, and went to the testimonies section (which I hadn’t been to before).  There at the top was a post called Is God Real to You?  I clicked it an saw it was really long, and I immediatly hit back on my browser.  Something smacked me in the back of the head and said “get back to it”.  So I did, and I read the most powerful thing ever.  I almost broke into tears twice, and I am sitting here at work….  Anyway give it a look

http://www.bibleforums.org/forum/showpost.php?p=1232649&postcount=1

I haven’t posted in a while because I left town to pick up my brother.  He is going to stay with us for a while.  This is a huge step for him to ask for help, and move all the way out to Texas. 

He came out to visit a few weeks ago, and Heather and I urged him to stay.  While he was out, I was drawn to Matthew 18:21-35.  I told him the other day, “my motto for us with you is 70 times 7″.  He started doing the math, 490, 77, etc.  I let him know that the mathimatical number is irrelevant to what I am saying.

I don’t know if he’ll ever read my posts here, but incase he does, here is the answer:
Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?” 
“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!” (Matthew 18:21-22)

Mike had his first baseball game of the season tonight. They were down by 5 in the second inning, and got on a streek. By the last inning, they were tied at 7. Mike went up to bat, strike one!…calm down Mike…strike two!…easy Mike, watch the ball. The wind up, the pitch…bam!! line drive down center field. All the way to the fence. Mike rounds first, dives into second, safe! The runner on second, rounds third…runs hard, and scores a run! Mike hit the game winning ball. The Angel’s win! The Angel’s win! MVP = Mike

Ok, the history behind the Book of Matthew is outstanding.  I don’t have enough time to trace things in order to put them into perspective. For one, there are 3 or 4 distinct Herods, and at least 2 talked about in the beginning of Matthew.  With that being said, I don’t have enough time to write about it at work.  It will have to wait until I get home tonight.

I just found a really nice plugin (Scripturizer) which automatically creates a link to the verses I post.  Now, you can go directly to the verse and change translations, view footnotes, or whatever else you are so inclined to do

I have decided to learn each book of the Bible one at a time.  I have been reading various ideas on how to study the Bible, and this seems to make the most sense to me.  I think I will start with the New Testament, so I can understand the new Covenant before learning what the old Covenant was.

Now, my problem is decding what order to take the books in.  I found a nice graphic that explains the timeline the Gospels were writen in and the timeline they write about.  I think I will use this as my guide for the order to study in.