Last night was our monthly worship night for Kingsfield Church.  I normally do the music for this, but because of the constant and eminent threat of baby, we subbed me out this month.  So I was back in the back listening to Aaron, one of our pastors, speak being distracted by the contractions my wife was having.  I was really trying to listen and pay attention, but when that is happening to your wife it is a little difficult to pay attention to everything else.  As Aaron was speaking he read a passage that I wanted to share with you.

It’s not very often I read Zechariah.  Did you know there was a book called Zechariah in the Old Testament?  Sure you did.  Well, in 4:6-7 it says,

‘You can’t force these things. They only come about through my Spirit,’ says God-of-the-Angel-Armies. ‘So, big mountain, who do you think you are? Next to Zerubbabel you’re nothing but a molehill.’

So, big mountain, who do you think you are?  That is a very good question to ask.  We all face problems and I know lots of people that are facing them right now.  In the midst of these problems we always feel like they are HUGE problems.  How can I go on with _______ in my way?  ________ is just too big too handle.  Whatever you fill in the blank with might seem like the most difficult thing to bear or that your whole world is coming to an end, but it’s not.  With the God-of-the-Angel-Armies on your side, the biggest things in the world have nothing on you!  The mountains are nothing.

With Him on your side, you can throw up one hand on the hip, the other making the sign for number one and zig zagging around, copping all the attitude you can muster and saying “mountain, puh-lease.”  I forget that a lot.  I have to be reminded by my failures to find my strength in Him and not me.  I have to be reminded that He is strong and I am less than weak.  With the God-of-the-Angel Armies on my side those mountains in my life don’t stand a chance.

What about you?  What mountains are standing in your way?  What mountain does God want to help you see that with Him it is nothing?  Thank Him today for being bigger than your issues.

Caption please.

As we have been reading through the Gospels on our YouVersion daily reading, I have gotten a chance to see some things that I hadn’t really noticed before.  This past week I saw one that really confused me.  I haven’t done any research at all about this, but I thought I would ask anyway.

One of these things that has been interesting to see as we read through the Gospels is the timelines.  It’s a little weird reading the different points of view because they don’t always tell the same story or with the same detail.  But the one that stuck out to me the most was the story of Jesus going into the temple, seeing all the madness of the people selling animals and loans, and driving them out of there.  I am confused about when this happened.  In Matthew (Matthew 21:12-17) the story is told after Jesus and the disciples come to Jerusalem for the Passover just before the crucifixion.  But in John (John 2:13-16), the story is told toward the very beginning.

So what’s the deal?  I don’t know that the timing really makes a difference because that isn’t point of the story.  But I’m still curious.  Any ideas?

There are very few times in my life that I read.  Those would be my Bible, blogs, an occasional book and when sitting in a “certain” place.  I have never really been much of a magazine reader.  I more or less get the sports ones (Sports Illustrated, Surfer) and look at the pictures.  But as I was recently flipping through the most recent Surfer magazine, I started thinking about the demise of print.  It was revolutionary in the past, but how long will it hold on?

Newspapers used to be the “immediate” way to get your news.  Now they are a day late!  Magazines used to have the great articles and ideas.  Now they are a month late!  The Internet has just killed these things.  Twitter and Facebook have news as it happens.  News and sports web sites have in depth articles and interviews immediately.  Seems like it should be time to say goodbye to newspapers and magazines. They used to be great but then became mostly waiting room and bathroom readings. Now they aren’t even that anymore. Instead of racks for magazines we should have charge stations for our iPhones or iPads.  That would be perfect.

Do you sill read the newspaper or subscribe to magazines?  Have you moved to the digital age or are you still hanging on to print?  Just curious.

Wisdom teeth have been removed.  Wisdom has left the building.  I’m now a few light bulbs short of a full drawer.  Since I have never been “under” or had surgery before, I had no idea what to expect from my body on the other side.  And since I was pretty out of it for the day, I thought I should give you a little perspective of someone who was there so you can all enjoy my misery.  Take it away, Kara-Kae!

My hubby is officially not the smart man I married. Oh well, I guess I’ll settle for what I’ve got. Brook is not one that gets sick very often and really doesn’t like to be. Very few times have I actually needed to take care of him, and I’ve never seen him on any type of pain meds other than a bit of Advil from time to time. The evil part of me was looking forward to this just to get a good laugh out of it. Give me a break…I’m 9 months pregnant and needed a good laugh! 

After they took him back for his surgery, I had about an hour in the waiting room.  Then they called me back to see him.  He was all smiles (well as much as he could smile with a mouthfull of gauze) and seemed to be in great spirits.  Well…that was all the drugs doing their work. 

Here are a few highlights of our car ride home as he was coming off the anesthesia: 

• He was very confused about how he got in the car, but the nurses didn’t let me walk him out. I guess they were afraid I wouldn’t be able to catch him in the huge state I’m in. This was a huge concern about how he got to the car.
• Asking me about 5 times if I had gotten his walet and chapstick from the doctor.  Apparently he was very worried that I had forgotten them. 
• Telling me he left his phone in the surgery room as he was taking it out of his pocket and starting checking messages.  Ummmm I’m thinking you have it? 
• Stressing to me how upset he was that the doctors took away his cell phone and strapped him to a chair.  Oh…told me that about 5 times too. He really wanted to twitter during surgery. 
• Begged me to go to Wal-Mart and run some errands I needed to do on my way home.  Yeah, like I’m going to do that.  
• Asked me about 8 times how long the surgery took. I think I told him 4 hours once because I knew he wouldn’t remember.

And my favorite quote later after we got home and he was nice and drugged up…

“My gauze tastes like Chicken Noodle Soup.  It’s really gross.  But I really like it.” 

It’s really no fun to not be able to do anything when he’s in pain, so I know how he’s felt over the last 9 months of my misery and not being able to make it go away.  He’s sure a cute patient. And an entertaining one.  

Thanks for your prayers as Brook recovers! He’s doing great, still high on pain meds and hopefully will continue to heal quickly.

If you watched TV at any point from 1983 – 1994 you have been blessed.  No, I don’t mean because of Transformers, Smurfs and Thundercats.  While those were equally blessing they are not the subject today.  There was one place in particular that was really a bright star.  PBS.  PBS had some wonderfully educational programs, many of which were actually relatively entertaining to the young mind.  But if you had any artistic streak in you at all, you have seen this guy.  

He was known for his hair.

He was known for his work.

He was known for his sayings.

That’s right.  Bob Ross.  Mr. White Afro himself.

Mr. Happy Trees.  Mr. Happy Everything.

It didn’t take a very long pause on the PBS channel during one of his shows to get drawn in and hooked waiting to see how the painting would turn out…or how many times he would say “happy”.  Just recently, I was thinking about how I haven’t seen those shows on in a really long time and all of a sudden the other day, one happened to be on.  Needless to say I sat there and watched for the entire painting.  As I watched I realized that there are some really great things to learn from Bob Ross (outside of how to paint).  Here are 5 things every person and organization should learn from Bob Ross.

1. Attitude – Bob Ross had an amazing attitude.  Like I said before he was Mr. Happy Everything.  During one show he told a story about it.  ”I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, ‘Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.’ That’s for sure. That’s why I paint. It’s because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.”  He understood that attitude is a decision and obviously he chose to have a happy one.  I have heard him say that you need dark to show the light.  How many times when things are going just perfect do we stop and think about how much we are not in control?  It is a very easy thing to overlook.  When those hard times hit our lives they show us how great the good times are and that we are not in control of them.
2. Hair – He was the king of the white afro.  That’s a big reason we loved him!  I mean seriously, who doesn’t love an awesome white ‘fro?!
3. Vision – Many people want to start something, but just stare at the blank canvas and don’t know where to start or where to go.  Ross was not that way.  He saw mountains, trees, lakes, snow, cabins, bushes, animals and more when he looked at the blank canvas.  He had vision for where he was going.  He didn’t have all the steps planned out, but he was never lacking for vision of what he was creating.  As the leaders of our families, churches and companies, we need vision.  We don’t need to have every single step laid out before us ahead of time, but we must have vision.  Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision the people perish.”
4. Decisive – With any project it is far too simple to drag it out because you can’t make up your mind.  Maybe you just talk about solutions or problems but then don’t do anything about them.  Watch one show and you will see how decisive he is.  Should I put a lake here?  Yes.  Done.  He isn’t constantly measuring to make sure his happy trees are going to be best here or over there.  He gathers the information and makes a well educated decision.  I know I could learn from that.
5. Generosity – Ross gave.  He gave his time to teach those of us who are NOT painters.  He gave away his paintings to the PBS stations to help them out.  He gave his time to help animals as well.  He went above what was expected of him.  We should to the same.  We have been blessed.  We would live in a different place if we all generously gave more than the minimum.

Bob Ross was a very interested dude.  One that I would definitely love to have met.  Maybe one of these days I’ll get a Joy Of Painting video and learn how to make happy trees.  But until then, I guess I’ll just have to learn other things from Bob Ross.

Now that it is a few days past the Super Bowl and the newness of the commercials that debuted during the game has worn off, is it safe to ask questions?  Well, either way, I’ve got a few.  Bite my head off or agree with me, I’m gonna ask them.  I mean, we can’t get too offended anymore since they are all just regular commercials now.  I just can’t wrap my mind around most of these questions yet, so I’m curious what you think.

• With the staggering price that that goes along with the commercial spots, is the amount of viewers worth it to debut your ad during the Super Bowl?
• If your commercial sucked (Carmax dramatic music and cheesy animals, random car commercial with a squirrel that didn’t seem to have anything to do with it, Taco Bell and Charles Barkley who do NOT rock, MetroPCS nerds, Denny’s screamingly bad chickens, and so many more) 1 – did you approve the commercial and what were you thinking, and 2 – does it adversely affect your return on investment?
• What was the point of the Focus On The Family commercial?  Was it just to promote Tim Tebow?  ’Cause that’s all I saw.
• Is there a better use of the millions spent on that commercial (Haiti, starving kids, etc.)?
• Will we ever drop the awful Clydesdales?
• Will GoDaddy think outside the fake “too hot for tv” box ever again?
• What was your favorite commercial?
• This was probably the best Super Bowl game I have ever seen.  Did you watch it?
• Can we all agree that leaving the “Who Dat” chant to the actual Saints team is best for everyone?

Back in the day when I had a Motorola Razr I thought I had the best phone.  I loved it!  It was so great.  I could have entire conversations with multiple people through texting without even looking at the phone (well maybe I looked to read responses)!  Then the day came to get a Blackberry.  Wow.  Stepping up in the world.  I could check my email!  Woo!  I had a Pearl and it blew away every phone I had ever had.  Then came the iPhone.  It took me a while to take the plunge because of the price tag, but then I found a better way through Craigslist and bought one.  Everything I said prior to the iPhone did not matter at all.  I could now see the millions of faults that every other phone I had ever had was composed of!  What joy!  Games.  Email.  Twitter.  Games.  Info.  Apps.  Apple!

The geniuses hanging out in Cupertino had done it again!  It is still to this date the best phone I have ever had.  Love it.  But with it comes an entire world of new decisions.  What apps should I get?  Is it worth it to buy apps?  Well, in my time with the iPhone I have determined that the paid apps aren’t necessary.  There are plenty of times that they would be nice and helpful and fun, but I still haven’t needed to buy them.  I actually have an iTunes gift card just waiting to be used for apps, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.  The free ones work just fine.  So here are my top 10 Free iPhone Apps!

1. YouVersion – The guys over at LifeChurch.tv have made a guy named Gutenberg seem like just a dude with a moveable type printing press.  Seriously?  Print Bibles?  What would you do with one of those!?  Downloaded by millions, tons of daily reading plans, 22 languages and 40 versions all in one?  Not bad.  Plus it is fun to sit on the front row at church and make the pastor think you are texting the whole time when you are really reading the Bible!

2.  ScoreCenter – Love it.  All MY scores, game updates, last play, stats, etc. quick and easy.  Choose your sports, choose your divisions or conferences, and choose your favorite teams!  It even gives you the start times in your time zone.

3.  TweetDeck – Yes, this Twitter app has it’s issues.  It crashes often.  It has a goofy bug in it that if you are commenting on a Facebook post and receive a text you have to restart the phone to get out.  But to be able to have a feed for the people I choose is awesome.  To be able to have a feed for the people I choose from Facebook is EVEN BETTER!

4.  EliminatePro – I suck at the Halo, 007, and on-your-own-fighting-against-other-people-with-better-skills-and-know-how type of games.  But this one I love.  The games are short and it can be operated with only two buttons.  The graphics are decent and the guns, splattering noises, and other upgrades are a blast.

5.  Touch Mouse – This I could have used long ago!  We bought cables so that we could use our TV as our computer monitor for things like Hulu and Skype, but it was really annoying and almost not worth it to have to get up to go to the other side of the room every time something happened or needed to be changed.  This gives us complete control over our laptop while being absolutely lazy!  It even has three buttons, two finger scrolling, tap to click and a keyboard thrown in there, too!

6.  Shazam – If you are like my wife, you like a LOT of music but have almost no idea who sings what.  I am the opposite.  For some reason I like the music quizzing.  We don’t play that game much anymore.  Shazam is perfect because when you hear a song you don’t know, you turn on the program and it listens to it for you and tells you what it is!  The only drawbacks are that if the room is very noisy, a lot of the time it won’t be able to make out the song and that it won’t understand live songs.  Bummer.

7.  ShopSavvy – I just started using this app yesterday.  I love it.  I almost bought a couple things at Best Buy but used this app and realized I could get them for half the Best Buy price elsewhere.  It also tells me where!  So now I have my choice of several online and local stores to choose from.

8.  Lose It! – Hi!  I’m brookjames.  This was me a year ago.  I was a size fat and then I tried Nutrisystem Jenny Craig Hungryman Atkins South Beach Subway Taco Bell Throwing Up Weight Watchers Lose It! and I lost 35 lbs.!  Yes, it is a little detail oriented, but if you really want to be serious about losing weight, this is a great way to do it!  Thanks to Lose It! I weigh less that I did in high school 10 years ago.

9.  Words With Friends – I was unsure if I should put this in my top 10 but I went ahead and did it.  As of right now I am using it a lot.  When you were young did you kick the foreign kids’ butts in the Spelling Bee?  Did you always get 100%’s on your vocal tests?  Me either!  But I like to play Scrabble (for some reason)!   This makes it super easy to play and you don’t have to worry about the baby chewing, swallowing, and choking on the letter Q (although we would all rather the letter Q go ahead and get digested…stupid letter).  But note that the iPhone is not a good substitute for the baby’s chew
toy either.

10.  Facebook – I never have been much of a Facebooker, but I’ve had a page for a long time.  Despite my efforts to stay away, everyone and their dog (literally) has a Facebook account now.  So, it is still a great way to talk to my friends that live in Arkansas…except we don’t really talk much on there.  It’s a great way to talk to all your friends that you just saw a few minutes ago!  The app is great and works well.  Upload pictures, comment on things, check fan pages, chat, stalk people, become friends with people you really aren’t friends with but want to see if their child turned out to be the demon child you always felt like they deserved, etc.  It’s good stuff.

Runners-up: WordPress, Surf Report, Family Guy, Redbox, Wikipedia, ShopShop, AppDeals

What are your favorites?

It’s really crazy to think that I’m gonna be a daddy in about 5 weeks.  That’s nuts!  I don’t feel old enough to be a dad!  I guess I am gonna turn old this year so it’s about time.  I mean seriously.  The contractions have started already!  Yeah they are few and far between, but that does mean that it is coming up soon!  And just like I learned in our Childbirth Class “you may get excited about having the baby”.

Yeah, I am excited.  My wife is excited.  Pregnancy numero uno is almost in the books.  Yes I understand that it won’t be over for a very long time, but the baby will be out, you will know her name, and many of the pains that KK is going through will be gone!  So, as we are X-ing out the last month of days, please keep praying for KK and the baby!  They are both doing very well and ready to be moving into the next stage.  Oh and that the baby doesn’t come on Monday so we don’t have to miss Chuck and 24 because of labor!

An Ode To Being A Man
by brookjames

it’s true that i love being a man
i get to stand when i use the can
it’s impossible for me to ever get pregnant
or come up with a word that rhymes with pregnant

heaven forbid i start to smell
or get a wound that begins to swell
good luck trying to get me to shave
or as an adult expecting me to behave

for every meal i like to eat meat
and i only wear shoes that comfort my feet
so what if i love blood, guns and fights
or heroes, explosions, or grail searching knights

but now that i have a family to lead
for them i would fight; i’d surely bleed
to protect and provide for my girl and my wife
and love them like the One who gave me His life.