As Bushie's World Turns (The Update Thread)

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Bushie,

Don't misunderstand me - I have no problem with you going to Africa and spreading the Gospel.  That's simply fulfilling the Great Commission.

Bingo, and that's all I want to do is fulfill the Great Commission.

doesn't "go into all the world" also include OK, or is OK separated from the world?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

It's quite obvious that Dave has chosen not to renew this thread for another season and this storyline is heading towards the ultimate closure.

O ye, of little faith.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

It includes Oklahoma, but it doesn't mean I am limited to Oklahoma.  God can take me anywhere He wants, whether it be Oklahoma, Florida, Europe, Australia, China, Kenya, or elsewhere in Africa or the World.  I really do feel led to move to Kenya in early 2015

Well, if God is leading you to Kenya, why has he not directly spoken to you about doing so?!  Did God catch laryngitis and lose his voice?

That’s the 800 pound elephant in the room that you refuse to address.

John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow.”

I can’t find anything in John 10:27 about “My sheep know how to read tea leaves.”  Nor can I find any example in scripture of God commissioning someone to do something without God actually speaking to them.

Obviously, God has given you the freedom to move to Kenya, just as he has given me the freedom to move to Kenya…but having the freedom to do something is totally different than being given a commission (an order) to do something.

If you’ve read my testimony, you know that God used a girl (who is now my wife) to bring me to Christ.  He set something inside my heart concerning her from the very instant I first came into her presence in the Fall of 1991 that made me understand my destiny was linked to her.  I wouldn’t understand it fully until the moment I was saved in Oct 1992, then God answered my query concerning the purpose of her being brought into my wife.

BUT, I did NOT interpret her purpose in bringing me to Christ as a sign that I had to marry her.  God did NOT command me to marry her, even though he DID command me to go and explain the true Gospel to her.  Marrying her was my own choice.  I had liberty from God to marry anyone I so chose to marry (as long as they were Christian…and of the opposite sex, of course ).

In fact, before our marriage, my pastor (he always gives pre-marriage counseling to couples as a prerequisite to conducting the marriage) even pointed out to me that nothing in my testimony require that I marry her.  I assured him I understood that and that I fully agreed.  But that is the difference between my pastor and yours – my pastor differentiates between freedom and God-given commands, and he believes the will of God is ALREADY spelled out in scripture (he doesn’t buy into things like The Purpose Driven Life which tells people they have to constantly seek God’s purpose for their lives).  And he knows the difference between the voice of God and the imagination of those who attempt to read tea leaves, cause he himself knows the voice of God because God spoke to him and said, “I am calling you to be a pastor.”  That’s why, if you’ve seen his videos I posted, he is so down to earth and unshaken by the latest fads going on in Christianity – he doesn’t get caught up in the latest doctrinal fads because he keeps a connection with Christ.

I have met pastors who became pastors without a true calling to do so – I once had a pastor  invite us over for a “bible study” (his wife worked with my wife in 1995 and had invited us over for a bible study – the pastor’s wife thought my wife was a heathen for wearing lip gloss and showing off her neck) tell me that he determined he was called to be a pastor because he put a fleece before God by placing two adds in some newspaper and didn’t receive a reply to either, and he had always received a reply to those ads.  I didn’t say anything to him, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me!!!…but that does explain why you suck.”  They ended up basically kicking us out of their house after asking me to come to Christ and then being offended by our testimony we gave as a response.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Bushie,

Don't you have a history of going off half-cocked in some area of life you believe God is leading you into?  Have you had any stability in your Christian life over the last 5 years?  How can you say God is leading you when you haven't had success in YOUR own Christian life, much less the lives of others?

If your pastor knows your unsteady history as a Christian and is still behind this Kenya idea...let's just say you need to prove yourself (not only hold down a steady job, but excel at that job) over the next couple of years before you run off to Kenya.

I’d have much more confidence if you had a history of success instead of a history of constant upheaval.  In fact, I’d feel more comfortable with your idea if you were a brand new convert who had just come to Christ and had been given a commission.

The fact that your Pastor knows your unstable Christian history and is not showing restraint on this can only mean, at least to me, that he is a big source of your instability.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Fundie war!

OK has always been an embarrassing neighbor for Texas...in fact, all of the adjacent entities (Mexico, NM, OK, AR, LA) are an embarrassment to Texas. 

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Laundry planning was about 35% of the original Update. It's a recurring theme to underline the protagonist's obsessive personality. In a way it serves as an illustration to the audience that there really has been no progress or evolution whatsoever. Laundry is the final symbol of the Update's hopeless universe.

you sure know your Update...is there a term for those of you who know every angle of the Update(kinda like Treker is a term for those who follow Star Trek)?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Jeff, you never addressed my question: If you don't go to Kenya, does that mean God changed his mind?

No, it would mean I read it wrong. 

there is so much illogical about your statement....

1) What exactly is it that you're attempting to read?

2) If God wanted you to do something, why wouldn't he communicate clearly to you so that there would be no misunderstanding?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

There is no such thing as luck and there is no such thing as chance.  I do not believe in those. 

that's odd, because God DOES believe in chance:

Ecclesiastes 9:11 "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The quote was "I have prepared you for 30 years for this big move.  Be still, and know that I am God, Be strong and of a good courage.  I have work left for you in Oklahoma, but you will not be a permanent resident of Oklahoma.  These men at Maisha need your help.  Don't worry about how you will get down there and don't worry about anything, I've got you in my arms.  Every hair on your head is numbered.  I know every thing about every one of your days before they even happen.  Be Still, and Know that I am GOD."

sorry, I haven't kept up with this thread, but this "commission" is simply a bunch of quotes from scripture mingled together:

"...Be still, and know that I am God... Be Still, and Know that I am GOD."

Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God” (KJV, verbatim)

Be strong and of a good courage. "

Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and of a good courage” (KJV, verbatim)

"Every hair on your head is numbered. "

Matthew 10:30 “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”

"Don't worry about how you will get down there and don't worry about anything"

Mat 6:25-28; Luke 12:22-29 “Do not worry”

I know every thing about every one of your days before they even happen."

Jer 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;  Before you came to birth I consecrated you; I appointed you as prophet to the nations.”



Etc, etc, etc.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The quote was "I have prepared you for 30 years for this big move.  Be still, and know that I am God, Be strong and of a good courage.  I have work left for you in Oklahoma, but you will not be a permanent resident of Oklahoma.  These men at Maisha need your help.  Don't worry about how you will get down there and don't worry about anything, I've got you in my arms.  Every hair on your head is numbered.  I know every thing about every one of your days before they even happen.  Be Still, and Know that I am GOD."

also, has anyone else recognized the fact that Bushie is 30 years old, the same age for as Jesus was when he began his ministry (Luke 3:23)?

Bushie, why haven't you mentioned this commission before?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The quote was "I have prepared you for 30 years for this big move.  Be still, and know that I am God, Be strong and of a good courage.  I have work left for you in Oklahoma, but you will not be a permanent resident of Oklahoma.  These men at Maisha need your help.  Don't worry about how you will get down there and don't worry about anything, I've got you in my arms.  Every hair on your head is numbered.  I know every thing about every one of your days before they even happen.  Be Still, and Know that I am GOD."

Bushie, aside from being uncommonly long-winded, I don't recall any example in scripture of a commission that quotes bible verses, esp so many bible verses.   Even in the account of commissions given within the NT, there is no example of God using so many bible quotes even though God had the entire OT from which to quote.

In fact, my commission was very to the point and concise, even though it included an answer to my question followed by a commission:

It was the ability to spiritual perceive this spiritual battle that caused me, right then and there, to believe the couple of chapters of Galatians I had been reading.  And then the spiritual insight panned over to my life and the multiple events separated by years in my life (how I used to watch Armstrong’s TV program in my early teens, how I met a friend in college who was a member of Armstrong’s church, how through him I had met my girlfriend who had prompted me to look into this thing) that brought me to this point of belief. And when I enquired to myself if all these events were engineered for the purpose to bring me to believe n Christ, God poured out his spirit into my heart and answered the question himself, “Yes, that is the reason why.  Now go and tell them the truth.”  

…while pacing in my living room having just accepted belief in Christ… I asked a question to myself, “Is that why all these things happened and why she was brought into my life, so that I would believe?” …And in that instance, God spoke to me in my heart and answered my question, “Yes, that is the reason why.  Now go and tell them the truth.”

So, my question “Is this why [all these things] had been brought into my life, so that I would believe?” was very loaded and included events going back to when I was a teenager.  Immediately after I asked that I received the Holy Spirit and God spoke to me and said, “Yes, that is the reason why.  Now go and tell them the truth.”

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

The quote was "I have prepared you for 30 years for this big move.  I have work left for you in Oklahoma, but you will not be a permanent resident of Oklahoma.  These men at Maisha need your help.  Don't worry about how you will get down there and don't worry about anything, I've got you in my arms.  Every hair on your head is numbered.  I know every thing about every one of your days before they even happen.  Be Still, and Know that I am GOD."

also, if you strip out the direct bible quotes (including God's apparent preference for the KJV, even though it is 2012), the rest of it is pretty poorly written, being somewhat of a vague ramble with some platitudes (bible quotes) thrown in to give it the appearance of authority, but it just doesn't have the laser-like focus of authority that a word from God has.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

You'd be defriended from his FB, jmf.

and de-brothered from his church, no doubt

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

You'd be defriended from his FB, jmf.

But isn't his advise bathed in prayer?

yes, but I determine truth neither by praying nor by watching the direction o fthe wind.  Rather I use prayer to make requests and to have God explore my motives.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

God doesn't have one specific template for how He speaks to His children.  WHy shouldn't He use Scripture?  He is the Author of Scripture and Scripture is 100% accurate.

Plus, John 1:1 says "In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and Word WAS God."

When God speaks Scripture to me, He is basically speaking Himself as God the Son.

granted God doesn't have a specific template, but seeing that of all the scriptural examples which show God giving commissions to people without God feeling the need to includes quotes of scripture within those commissions, this sure has the appearance of something you made up and laced with KJV bible quotes to make it look authentic.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

If God were the author of it all, he is a bit of a schizophrenic himself - an ass kicking martinet into capital punishment one day, and a forgiving loving type the next - a veritable Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Torie, Torie, Torie...the executions of the OT are a prefiguration of the coming Judgement, and serve as examples to warn us that we can't mock God.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

If God were the author of it all, he is a bit of a schizophrenic himself - an ass kicking martinet into capital punishment one day, and a forgiving loving type the next - a veritable Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Torie, Torie, Torie...the executions of the OT are a prefiguration of the coming Judgement, and serve as examples to warn us that we can't mock God.

Or the author or authors, in either the first draft, or the modified draft, or the one that was interlineated by someone later due to marketing needs at the time, which interlineations then became part of the text, were just in a bad mood that day. So many possibilities, so little time.

Since we are here to promote logic, it is undeniable that both the OT and NT believe in a coming Judgment.  And the both the OT and NT state that the old covenant would be superseded by a new covenant.  So both OT and NT are on the same page.

To claim the underlying mindset of the bible is the work of multiple minds, is to be purposely dismissive of its deeply embedded connectivity and cohesiveness that is either explicitly stated or can be logically deduced.  And such purposeful ignorance would be most illogical, Councilor Torie.

Clearly, the books of the bible have to have a single author because they deeply profound and are interdependent, not standing on their own - much like the forces of nature are interdependent.  One would not claim the forces of nature themselves are the collaboration of the followers of science, that would be absurd – the laws are too remarkable, too profound to be the work of the human mind, and too interwoven to be the work of a committee, esp a committee of several dozen throwbacks seperated by a timespan of hundreds or even thousands of years.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Read this book and get back to me jmfcst, which got kick ass reviews. Sometimes, securing a greater understanding and knowledge requires reading more than one book. I'm about half way through it myself. I am going slowly, because I am reading the sometimes rather complex text closely. Hey, after you have read it, we can discuss it on the religion board if you like. Beyond God's vacillations on whether to be hard or soft on crime, another is the osscillations between apocolypse now, apocolypse  later, and well, we have better things to do than waste time on such idle speculations as whether we need to worry about paying off our debts or not because the secular world might end before the notes we made become due. It's all there. Cheers.

You want me to read that book?  How about I allow you to finish gleaning and arming yourself with this book’s great knowledge, written, I am sure, by an author with ever surpassing insight.  How about I just kick my feet up until you decide when you’re ready to rumble.  At such time, you and your BENGAY-lubed mind can bring whatever books you want to the fight.  

I, on the other hand, will bring with me my usual ordnance: I will stand with belt of truth buckled around my waist, with the breastplate of righteousness and love in place, and the hope of salvation as a helmet, in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left.  But my weapons are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds, to expose foolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And I will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

You are not going to read the book then jmfcst?  Are you fearful of reading material that might challenge your beliefs?  Be brave jmfcst. Courage is the most noble of virtues. I am never so happy as when I am reading texts written by very smart people on the Left. Being challenged, and then challenged some more, turns me on. How about you?

In any event, it is more productive if a discussion focuses on one text at a time.  That way there is a common point of departure. It keeps matters focused. Focus is our friend.

Dude, the fact that you’re even reading that book, searching for an argument against the bible, is a sign that you are the one living in fear.  Me?  I don’t have that problem, for God has provided my provision, and I have come off the bench stone cold into battle countless times, unaware of what arguments lie before me, and being armed with only the bible for knowledge…yet I’ve never met an adversary whose arguments could forge against me what we Christians call “a prosperous weapon”.  I do however long for a good challenge, so I can only hope, with the entire world’s knowledge at your disposal to muster against me, that there might be some argument you could find that’s up to the task.  

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I was not anticipating some sort of sanguinary gladiatorial fight to the death for the amusement of the mob jmfcst

wrong movie, bro

---

but rather something more on the lines of a civil discussion, with a common point of departure.

dude, after reading it, just wake me up when you're willing to bring forth what you consider to be the book's best arguments. 

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Good Monday Evening! I had a wonderful meeting with the founder of Maisha, Beatrice, this afternoon and she gave me some challenges and stuff to pray for and start doing! She said (1) they are working on funding for a volunteer housing center near the orphanage, (2) there is a family who is starting to save up to move down there for 2 years to adopt a child, (3) She encouraged me in late 2013 or early 2014 to go down there for a month or so to get a feel and assess what life would be like down there without the comfort of a team with me, (4) encouraged me to start interning with them in my spare time researching links for grants to fund the volunteer house, as well as projects in the slums, (5) start researching housing down there, such as renting a house or an apartment in Kisumu, and (6) not sell everything in America because I may want to come back every now and then to visit, (7) research missionary funding for 1, 2, 3, and 5 year terms. She wants me to continue to communicate with her as I have questions and as she thinks of something that might be useful. She wants to see me in a couple weeks before she leaves for Kenya on June 3 for two months.  She also wants me to still email her while she's down there so if I have questions or want her to check on something, she can do it in person.

sound advice, for a change.  i take it she doesn't go to your church.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Glad to hear you have a sponsor for your trip.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

It is very possible, even close to likely, that within the next 24-96 hours, my return trip to Kenya in March 2013 will be completely PAID IN FULL!!!  That is the big fleece I put out at the very end of March 2012 when I first got home from Kenya, that my trip would be completely paid for by the first meeting this fall.  Pfffff, my God can do better than that!! I got a call last week that an anonymous donor who will not give me their name or contact information, is going to give me through a mutual friend the money for me to go again.  I am going to pick up the money at 10:00 am on Tuesday and have it deposited in my account shortly after that!

How did this prospective "donor" become aware of your "need?"  Did you advertise or something? I am not sure what the text, "[t]hat is the big fleece I put out at the end of march 2012" means. Is this some reference to the golden fleece?

the donor probably just heard about it through the grapevine, considered it a good cause, and decided to pony up the funds out of his good heart

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I hear the cops are on the way to Bushie's house now

I highly doubt that...this donor story is one story that is completely believable from my experiences.  And if the check were bad, Bushie wouldn't be the one in trouble.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

hmmmm...if Bushie's calling keeps landing him cash, something everyone wants, maybe the Forum will start believing him...

HOFSTEDDER: I'm still having these dreams, Doctor, and I
still can't stop myself from believing them.

DOCTOR: I've told, Mr. Hofstedder, to believe in one's
dreams is a manifestation of insanity.  And the sooner you
accept this, the sooner you will get well.

HOFSTEDDER: But I dreamed the Archangel appeared and
whispered into my ear and told me where to find a Golden
Wonka Ticket.

DOCTOR: And what exactly did he say?

HOFSTEDDER: Well what difference does that make?  This was a
dream, a fantasy.  I mean, you said just now--

DOCTOR: Shut up, Hofstedder, and tell me where the ticket
is!