The difference between this and, say, Google Calendar is that GCal gives me too much freedom. I can pick how long pre-scheduled events are going to be, but in reality I almost never know how long the events should be. This way I’m forced to make each event a third of my day, which is not likely to underestimate. I’ll give that some serious thought.

I mentioned other problems in this post, though, like thoughts coming too quickly and not having a good system for taking them down in time. Still have to solve those problems.

that helps me keep sane with a lot of things to do. if i don’t get something done on the day i’ve assigned, i could use part of the two spare days, or it’ll have to wait for next week. and then i only use that day for that purpose (no meetings on lesson prep day, no catch-up on sabbath day, etc.). and if i get a thought or a need for a non-day subject, i write it down, or put it in an email to myself, or something, and get back to it on the proper day.

i’m still working this out, but it seems like a good plan, and apparently a lot of leaders and successful dudes do stuff like that. i’ll try to find the rest of my notes from driscoll’s “don’t burn out” ministry ideas and send them to you.

What’d you mean when you said, “Adam is next…”? Next for what?

Adam is next. And maybe we can Albert in on this too.

I can’t say that I have a solution to this. Wish I did. But I can definitely relate to what you’re feeling. The way we lose sight of things is different. Something pressing or exciting or painful seems to override what was whereas with me, a passivity blooms and brings forth a forgetfulness. In the end, we both are stressed and at points of despair.

I can’t say that I’ve grown substantially in this, but one theme that has grown is how much a dependence on God saturates everything. This memory problem that we exhibit is no different. God is sovereign over our thoughts and if we wish to produce this fruit in our lives, we must first remember that it is He who produces it and not some ability or gadget. And what this knowledge should point us to is prayer. These things come from God, so we seek them there. We pray earnestly first and foremost. Experience tells me that the rest follows.

What do you think?

i’ve been out-nerd-ed. what does that even mean?

It was great to share and rejoice in the truth with you : )

This particularly resonated with me:
“At it’s core, I see a type of idolatry that sets the mind’s grasp of “reality” as ultimate instead of God as ultimate.”

I thought that once I had no serious intellectual reasons to doubt God I would suddenly just strike out and live for him with all my heart, as if my mind and heart were that friendly with each other. On the contrary, it’s even worse now because my disobedience doesn’t even have intellectual excuses.
I have definitely made an idol out of something humanly unattainable: the mind’s *grasp* of “reality”.
-Daniel

This is something that I’ve been thinking about too actually! I love how God works these things together so that his people are working and learning in unison. He is indeed a grand orchestrator.

All these things happened quite unintentionally, but it just so happens that I’ve committed Tuesdays and Fridays to fasting, Saturdays to Sabbath, and Sundays to worship and fellowship with the saints. I’m not really sure what the difference between Saturday and Sunday are, but I know that it works against the indifference I feel come over me when it’s time to make that decision to go to church. It all started one Friday as I woke up late one day with just enough time to make it to work. I hadn’t eaten very well the day before, and I wasn’t going to be able to eat until much later that night. Since I was already functionally fasting, I figured I might as well make the most of it and use the echo of my physical hunger to point me back to the reality of my innermost hunger for God. The same thing happened the next Tuesday and I’ve been keeping it going ever since.

I’ve come to find that a particular character flaw of mine lies in my desire to know the outcome of something before I begin a task. I’ve had it since I was a little kid and it served to get me in all sorts of trouble so much so that my first grade teacher couldn’t put up with me. She had me transferred to the a different class with the rest of the hyperactive kids. That new teacher would come to find that I was just bored with my work. I wouldn’t see the purpose in it, so I wouldn’t do it. Ironically, the same was true of me 15 years later and it was always visible in exercising spiritual disciplines. I would lose purpose in a middle of a fast and break it. When I would lay in my bed at night, prodding myself to pray, I would resist the Spirit out of a hopeless outlook. When I would see my Bible the next morning and hear my heart cry out for nourishment, I would suffocate it with my unbelief. A point that I want to make is that there is definitely something to be said about waiting to know all of the details to a work in order to see something through. At it’s core, I see a type of idolatry that sets the mind’s grasp of “reality” as ultimate instead of God as ultimate. During that Friday, I saw God bring my “understanding” to shame and I was humbled before him. I finally saw that all the things that Adam said about waiting for the “feeling” to come were true. But that’s not what I’m standing on now.

What I don’t want to communicate is that we shouldn’t wait to do something until we “feel” it. Adam kept saying it all the time last semester and although I do agree with him, it was never sufficient enough for me to stand on. That is, I couldn’t use that as ground to propel me forward in the works that I desired to be apart of. What I do want to emphasize, however, is the man-centeredness that we display in doing so and how it is absolutely necessary to repent of that. Once God is back in the center, it’s much easier to go out and live obediently, even when the feelings don’t necessarily follow.

The reason I came by your website was because I wanted to go through your old blog post about how seriously God takes our sin. I saw the theme again as I was reading through today’s scriptures in Numbers 32:15. If the tribe of Reuben and Gad would have not taken up arms alongside the rest of Israel, God would’ve abandoned all of Israel in the wilderness and destroyed them. And what’s crazy about this? God didn’t need Reuben or Gad to go and drive out his enemies. It wasn’t as if God was up in the heavens saying, “If they leave, it’s hopeless!” I don’t know the full extent of God’s reasoning, but I do know there is something to be said about our joy in God and how that is directly tied to our obedience. Piper says it all the time. Living for God’s glory is only done and can only be done by God’s ways. Consequentially, our highest joys and fulfillments can only be found in obedience to God. Who was it that said “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.”

That being said, the Sabbath is not a suggestion, it’s a commandment. It’s part of how we are wired. We need it. Spurgeon was talking about prayer when he says this but I find that it rings true here as well.

“Yet so strange is the infatuation of man on the one hand, which makes him need a command to be merciful to his own soul, and so marvelous is the condescension of our gracious God on the other, that he issues a command of love without which not a man of Adam born would partake of the gospel feast, but would rather starve than come.”

Your question is ultimately “Will I feast or will I starve?” That doesn’t mean that you are not going to fail in your attempts to rest. Our warfare is very nuanced. I’ve often confused passivity with resting, but the resting the bible calls us to do is a strangely active one. I can’t say that I’ve got it all figured out yet, but each day as I strive, God continues to refine me and lead me in the correct way. My fastings are meager, my prayers are insufficient, and my desires and motives are far from what they should be. But every day, But God is showing his strength perfect in my weakness. Every day gets surprisingly better.

I love you hermano and I miss you terribly. I’m praying what I said will be used by the Spirit to bring about life in you.