Not As Thankful As I Should Be

I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a wife and daughter that love me, and family and friends that are better than I deserve. More than anything else, God loves me, has saved me, and even wants to use me to serve Him. I am really thankful for that.

But I'm not as thankful as I should be. I know that I have been given more blessings than I could ever deserve and I have received more than I've lost, but this year the losses hit hard. I've had a sister and a brother die less than four months apart, and I'm feeling that loss a lot right now. It's not that I didn't feel it initially, but it's the holidays, and well...you know. The fact that how I'm feeling is considered "normal" or "understandable" is really little comfort. I try to not let all of this effect Shanna or Abbey, but that doesn't always work out. I'm probably also still holding on to some resentment or hurt feelings toward others that were created during that time. I shouldn't be, and I understand that, but I'm just being honest. I need to do a better job of forgiving others even when they don't ask for it, want it, or even realize the need for it. I need to show the mercy, forgiveness, and understanding God (and many, many others) have shown me.

I owe God more thanks than I could ever give Him, but He loves me anyway. I have so much to be thankful for, and I am truly thankful. If it doesn't always show, I apologize.

What You Don't Do Doesn't Count

Ok, maybe it counts a little, but not much.

On Pastor Jason's Blog he is talking about marriage and a conference he is hosting. I thought I would just add my own thoughts on the topic, but if you don't want to read the whole thing I'll sum up my philosophy for you:
You don't get points for the things you don't do.

Not being a jerk isn't the same thing as being nice. We have to be active participants in our marriages and families. Here are a few thoughts I have on the subject:

You don't hit, but do you hug?
You don't yell, but do you communicate?
You don't cheat, but are you meeting his/her needs?
You don't stay out all night, but are you really home?
You don't tear down, but do you build up?


If I went on, it would probably sound even more trite, but I think you get the point. We need to be doing things to make our marriages and families work. When Satan successfully attacks a marriage or family, it impacts not just that family, but all of their friends, their church, and really our whole society. And it can do that not just for now, but for the generations that follow.


What suggestions do you have on how we can strengthen our marriages?

Would You Be This Man's Friend?

It's good to have friends like Claude. The point of my last post was how copying music that you didn't pay for is stealing and Claude (correctly) seems to have applied that to all copyrighted material. Well, the image I used on my last post was of a particular family of mp3 players made by a company whose name rhymes with "scrapple". Anyway, Claude asked where I got the image—implying that I didn't get approval to use it. He was right. Despite the fact that I wasn't using it for commercial use and there was no money being lost, I did not obtain the rights to it, so I shouldn't have used it.
I went on the "rhymes with scrapple" website, and journalists are allowed to use the images for publication, but it didn't specifically state whether the use extended to blogs. I looked further, even called a couple of numbers at the company, but couldn't speak to anyone. So that left me with a decision...Do I interpret their rights of use the way that favors me, or do I take it down?

I took it down. I went to the Sandisk website, and they have lots of images that are free to download, so I replaced the image from the "rhymes with scrapple" company with a Sandisk mp3 player.

I'm glad Claude's my friend.

By the way. I didn't get permission to use his image, and I don't care!

What Is Stealing? Pt. 2

"Everyone is doing it."

"It's harmless."

"It's easy."

"They make too much money anyway."

"I mean, downloading a song or two of a particular artist is not going to hurt them."

Don't worry, I know about the plank in my eye. This is just something that's been on my mind. Not targetted at anyone.

YEA!!!!!

Look, I know it may sound silly, but it has been bu-huh-hug-ging me for a while that I could not register my name as a domain name. It was already owned by someone that, in my opinion, was either a cyber squatter or domain shark (I'm not sure there is a difference). Well, I waited for a couple of years, kept checking to see if it was available, and even recently sent a request to ICANN to see if anything could be done about freeing it up for someone that wanted to actually use the domain name. Although I never heard back from them—and I don't know if it did any good—www.jimbird.com finally became available. As soon as I found out, I was all over it like stink on a monkey. And praise God, I didn't have to bid for it, or try to buy it away from someone. All I had to do was pay a whopping 10 bucks and it was all mine. Vanity? I hope not. Easier to get to for myself and others? I hope so. Now www.jimbird.com will bring you to the www.discoverychurchjim.blogspot.com site, plus, I can do more things with it in the future.

That's me up top doing the "happy dance"!

What Is Stealing?

How do you define it?

Stop Worrying And Pray

This is actually advice to myself as much as anybody. The fact is, by the end of tomorrow, one of these two guys is going to be our president-elect. Since I'm not licensed for ministry yet, I'll go ahead and say it—I'm voting for McCain. But being me, I've been spending way to much time worrying and stressing about the outcome of the election instead of resting in the fact that God is in control. I can only do two things—Pray and vote. One of these I can only do once, the other I'm told to do "without ceasing". Nothing there about stressing out.

Guess I've still got some work to do.