sustaining word

becoming a person of diligence

jazzmetalman — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:49:53 +0000

Prov 13:4 - The slacker craves, yet has nothing, but the diligent is fully satisfied. (HSCB)

I love this verse, partly because it uses the word “slacker”, but mainly because of the great truth and promise that it is. I must confess that after I took to using the Holman Christian Standard Bible I fell in love with its simplistic way of declaring truth – I know when I have been a slacker, and so does God!

Some commentators see this verse solely relating to a persons discipline with regards to work – I would conjecture that here would be a strong base of the old protestant work ethic of “God helps those who help themselves”. I want to dispel this interpretation of this verse – there is much more to it that just reward for hard personal effort! However, I would love $10 for every time I have shattered a believers attitude when explaining that that particular phrase is not a bible verse – not even in Hezekiah!

There are two key words as I see it – slacker and diligent and the outcomes of this verse are either negative or positive, depending on where you are at, or more to the point, where you remain. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines them as follows:

Slacker – a person who avoids work or effort. Originally used in the USA to describe a person who deliberately avoided military service. A modern usage is to describe a person characterised by apathy and aimlessness.

Diligent – to be careful and conscientious in one’s work or duties

The main reason why I don’t believe that this verse relates to our work life, but is talking about our “complete” life, is the usage of the word “soul” at the beginning of the verse. This has more to do with a person’s “heart desire”, than the outcome of effort and work. The intent of this word is that it describes the heart, the person, the very life of someone. It describes the very totality of who we are – the completeness of a person – a person who has been created in the image of God. But this happens to be a slacker, a sluggard, with cravings that will never be satisfied.

The terms sluggard, slacker, can be interchanged with lazy, but the basic meaning is to describe a person who is habitually lazy, with a strong implication that the person also displays no discipline and initiative. This lazy, ill disciplined person is further described by Solomon as someone who craves things. It’s not the kind of craving that a pregnant woman may have – it is far deeper than that. What Solomon was describing was a strong yearning, even a lusting for things. Yet , with all the lusting, yearning, and desiring that the slacker can muster, he ends up with nothing.

So, to paraphrase Solomon in the first part of this verse – The lazy, slack and ill-disciplined person will try and fill their life with things that consume their waking moments, but will receive nothing that they dream and yearn for.

But it gets better – look at the promise that comes after the handing down of the judgment to the slacker – let’s recap what Solomon declared – but the diligent is fully satisfied. How awesome is that! Diligence brings reward; diligence brings authority and diligence brings riches.

I believe that as Christians, we are called to be diligent, and not lazy. To some, this comes easy, but to others it requires a lot effort, work and discipline. Some people are born with self-discipline, others need it developed in their lives. But that’s why we have a God in Heaven, isn’t it? If we submit to Him, He will transform us.

For those of you like me who were created without a lot of discipline – i.e. with a sanguine personality, or if you are more of a phlegmatic type, we can take counsel from one of God’s smallest creations – the ant. Solomon makes a really valid point in Prov 6:6 – Go to the ant, you slacker! Observe its ways and become wise.

When i was a kid growing up in Sydney, we used to experience awesome and powerful summer thunderstorms – usually late in the afternoon. I reckon that I would have been around 10 or 11 before I realised that I could predict an upcoming thunderstorm just by watching the ants near the gate that was at the front of our driveway. From about an hour to an hour and-a-half before the thunderstorm would arrive, we would see all these ants scurrying around on the driveway trying to get things into their nest – if it was St Georges Terrace, it would have been a stampede. The ants were frenetic but they seemed to know what was coming, and what they had to do to protect themselves.

I guess that this was what Solomon was trying to portray when he commanded the slacker to go to the ant and observe its ways.

I’ll leave you with one scripture, Prov 10:4 Idle hands make one poor, but diligent hands bring riches.

Lord, make me diligent in spite of myself!!!!

sharpie

jazzmetalman — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:36:32 +0000

My sport of choice to watch, now that I’m too old to play, is rugby union – the game they play in heaven! The mighty Western Force is my team in the Super 14, a provincial competition pitting sides across the three great rugby nations of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

It’s tribal, but also nationalistic – in other words competitive to the hilt for players and fans alike.Last night saw the kick-off of the 2010 season, and unfortunately the Awesome Force lost, but it’s still going to a good year.

But what was really good was that last year at a charity auction, I got to bid for a signed shirt by the captain, Nathan Sharpe. Sharpie is an awesome player and a great guy, so I was thrilled to find out that I won it. Add a few photos, stick it in a frame, and here it is – a nice piece of sporting memorabilia.

Who knows, Sharpie may be the captain of the champion Super 14 team for 2010.

my favourite 10 iPhone apps

jazzmetalman — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:07:05 +0000

It’s a new year, and I thought that I would list down my 10 favourite iPhone apps from 2009 and going into 2010. To keep it to 10, I have excluded the twenty or so apps that form part of iPhone OS 3.1.2 – for the record I only have a an iPhone 3G bought on the day of its release in Australia in July 2008.

In no particular oder, here they are:

Tecarta NIV – even though the NIV is not my Bible of preference, this is a great app to use during messages/study with it’s integrated note taking facility, from which you can email to yourself or friends. Four stars.
Drop7 – a really simple, addictive game that allows me quick breaks during the day. I don’t know what it says about me when I describe it as simple and addictive! Four stars.
Tweetie 2 – for me the best app for Twitter – great display of timelines, DMs etc. It’s used all day. Five stars.
Boxcar – push notifications for status updates from Twitter, Facebook etc. I use it for Twitter updates to see if I want to follow up in Tweetie 2. Four stars.
Kindle for iPhone – great companion for the Kindle. See my post on my initial thoughts on the kindle. Four stars.
Olive Tree Bible Reader – in my opinion, the BEST Bible app available. I have a number of versions, NKJV, ESV, HSCB and NLT, plus a heap of books (before I purchased the Kindle) – powerful searching, easy to use, good study tool when away from my laptop and home desktop. It has come in handy too many times to recount. Five stars.
Sygic Mobile Maps – I don’t use GPS navigation that often, but when I need to, Sygic is excellent. Hardly any lag time; good text to speech; and an always improving interface and product. Four and a half stars.
1Password – 1Password is a great app on the Mac platform, and this is the companion app for the iPhone. Stores web passwords and other key information such as PINs. Can also be utilised to generate extremely strong passwords for additional protection on the web. Four and a half stars.
Flight Control – a great game from a small Aussie developer. When you have a spare 5 to 15 minutes, the goal is to try and land planes on a series of different landing strips – an island, an aircradft carrier and outback Australia are three of the challenges. Great fun. Four and a half stars.
Evernote – a really good use of cloud computing. Online storage of documents at no charge for a reasonable monthly upload limit. Great to have 24/7 access to important documents. Four stars.

Other notables that didn’t make the cut are the official Arsenal app, Word Press 2.0, Things and CricInfo. These missed out as they are not essential, but they are great apps regardless.

first thoughts on the kindle 2

jazzmetalman — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:09:32 +0000

It’s been now two days since I received my Kindle 2, Amazon’s eBook reader. It’s early days, but I am extremely happy with it so far.

These are the really pleasing attributes of the Kindle 2 (International Version):

The speed of the transfer from the Kindle Store to the device
The management of titles on the Kindle; both those purchased from the Kindle Store and those transferred from previous purchases on other devices
The integration with the Kindle for iPhone app, whereby books are synchronised over both devices for ease of continuity of reading
The iPhone app is as good an eBook reader for the iPhone that I have used – easily on par with Stanza
The reading experience is pleasant and better than expected
It’s lightweight, easily held and controllable with one hand
Unobtrusive style, with clean lines that don’t distract from the reading experience
The good level of third party software to assist in managing your Kindle and its library. The best that I have found is Calibre
Lastly, with the addition of a Gelaskin cover (mine are in the photos here), the Kindle is easy to hold, and looks really good.

As it has been only two days, I haven’t yet used the included dictionary or the note taking features but they look promising and both appear functional and practical.

However, not all things are perfect. In my opinion there are a few issues that need to be addressed in the future (I have no doubt that Amazon will address these).

The synchronisation between the Kindle and the iPhone appears only to be functional for books purchased from the Kindle store – titles loaded locally do not show up on the iPhone
The quantity of titles available for international users is significantly less than those available to US users. In fact, I was unable to buy Nancy Wake, a book by Australian author Peter Fitzsimons, yet I could purchase this book if I lived in the US.
Computer usage is restricted to Windows based PC’s at the moment. Kindle for Mac is coming, but no date has been given for it’s release. This is only an inconvenience as you can run Windows on any Intel based Mac. Having a Mac based client however, will complete the Kindle experience for me.

An interesting footnote is that eBooks outsold physical books at Amazon over the Christmas period.

listen to the herald

jazzmetalman — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:29:31 +0000

Tis nearly Christmas!

I love Christmas – the celebration amongst families and friends; the exchange of gifts; a short break from work; but most of all, it is the time where we remember the birth of Jesus. May it be sunny and fine if you live in the southern hemisphere, and may it be a white christmas in the northern hemisphere.

Without Christmas, there is no salvation, so this season always brings into the focus the gift that God gave to this world – His son, Jesus.

Enjoy this carol by The Blenders, and have a fantastic and a blessed Christmas!

a new confession

jazzmetalman — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:06:28 +0000

Dashboard Confessional is one of my favourite bands – interesting lyrics, good melodies and passion in the vocals from Chris Carrabba. Alter the Ending has been out for about five weeks and I’ve been listening to it pretty regularly for about, five weeks. The music, due to the lyrical content, could be considered Emo, but I’m not that into labels – music is meant to invoke an emotional response, and if music moves me, then I like it, regardless of genre.

Here’s a live version of the album’s first song Get Me Right - a sentiment that I have related to over the years.

Here is the first single of the album, Belle of the Boulevard.

Hey, if you like what you hear and see in these songs, check out the album, and previous albums on iTunes.

learning new parenting skills

jazzmetalman — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 04:49:13 +0000

My oldest, Elissa, finished Year 12 six weeks ago. Since that time, many changes have taken place – she has lost all your wisdom teeth, we have gone 50/50 in a a car for her and she is going out and about with friends who have already got their P plates.

So now I’m being forced to learn new things – firstly, to stay up until she arrives home. It wasn’t that long ago that I picked her up from events, no I just to wait up till she arrives home, and that brings with it interesting emotions as I wait for her arrival.

But the new parenting skill that I enjoy most developing is the skill at being a patient teacher of driving skills. Having learnt to drive over 25 years ago, and then teaching my wife to drive a manual car leading up to our marriage, I haven’t consciously thought about the skills of driving, let alone the method of teaching them, for a very long time. But it’s fun – to see someone struggle, then progress with what has become second nature to me, has been a great time. I love the way she picks things up; gets frustrated; moves on; and conquers a new skill all in a short time at the wheel.

More importantly however, is that it’s a fun and new way of spending time with one of my kids.

So, at the end of each time together in the car, I still don’t know who’s learning the most.

a change in the climate change debate

jazzmetalman — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:13:51 +0000

It’s been an interesting time watching the world’s leaders, demonstrators, and a fair number of freeloaders descend upon Copenhagen for the great “Climate Change Conference”. I have never been a believer in climate change, going to back to the 1980′s when we were told that aerosol cans were bad for the ozone layer. This is not the forum to discuss the size of the carbon footprint that this conference takes up, but it is rather ironic that the participants don’t seem to be concerned about their current footprint.

The Australian media, if asked, would derisively describe me as a “climate change sceptic”, solely on the basis that I hold the position that the global climate has not been unduly influenced by the earth’s ever expanding population. John Finkelde, a highly repsected Pastor and leader in Perth, wrote a few days ago on the topic of himself being a global change agnostic. It was a great article and I encourage you to read it.

But it seems to me that the winds are changing – there is a more vocal objection in the media, albeit from right leaning columnists, but the amount of positive comments posted on the articles shows a trend towards, not just sceptiscism, but anger against those who will try to impose their beliefs upon us. It is here where it comes to a focal point – to many climate change apologists, it is a faith, a faith that will not allow challenge or scrutiny.

Two recent blogs highlight the increased vocal support by the ordinary person: Piers Akerman in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt.

If you have ten minutes, below is an interview that the increasingly outspoken, and more importantly, increasingly heard, Lord Christopher Monckton conducts with a sincere Greenpeace supporter – alarmingly her “faith” is more valid than any fact. I encourage you to share the thoughts of Lord Monckton if you are concerned where the global leaders are planning to take all of our countries.

wonder goal

jazzmetalman — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:55:30 +0000

Great 2-1 win over Liverpool at Anfield sealed by this fantastic Andrey Arshavin right footed special.

What’s more amazing was the fact that Arsene Wenger commented after the match that Arshavin couldn’t even use his right foot during the week at training due to injury and soreness. Here’s the gaffer’s quote after the game

He surprises the goalkeepers and defenders every time. His foot was injured and he couldn’t hit the ball properly on his right foot and didn’t practice the whole week nearly. But when he had the chance he still took it. Later I had to take him off because of that. At that moment [of the goal] he didn’t feel the pain.

Don’t you just love his celebrations. If you want to see his four goals at Anfield from last season, click here. It’s a great memory to revisit.

calls for change

jazzmetalman — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:19:21 +0000

In Rom 12:2, Paul gives the charge to the believers in Rome to transform or change their mind by allowing it to be renewed by the Spirit of God – Paul said the renewal, not the removal, of your mind! The New Century Version calls us to be changed from within to a new way of thinking.

The challenge that lies before all Christians is that we are to become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13). As you would be aware, some people require more change than others in the path to attaining the full measure of Christ – for me, I have an extremely long road set before me. But it is the challenge of change, of growth, that motivates me onwards, even though the price of change is sometimes high.

John the Baptiser summed it all up in John 3:30 when, speaking of Jesus, he said, He must become greater; I must become less. In the NKJV the verse is translated with the words increase & decrease with the Greek meaning to enlarge and to lower. In our steps towards having a greater maturity, it is vital that we adopt John’s attitude as our own, as we undergo transformation and change, remembering that I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Gal 2:20)

Not all change is progress, but all progress requires change.

It is how we approach change that determines how we come through the times of change & transition. There are three essential attitudes that we must embrace to see change take place in our lives:

the future will not be like the past
the future will not be like what we expect
the rate of change will be greater than in the past