prep work for taiwan...

Excellence or obedience?

Question: What's your aim in life--excellence or obedience?
What's the difference? To aim for obedience is to aim for perfection, not for "excellence," which is actually something less.
"Wait a minute!" you reply, "I thought excellence and perfection were the same thing."
Sometimes they appear to be. But mere excellence allows room for a mixture. In most arenas, excellence is not a fixed standart at all. It's a mixed standard.
Let us show you what we mean. American businesses are in search of excellence. They could be in search of perfection, of course--perfect products, perfect service--but perfection is too costly and eats into profits. Rather than be perfect, businesses know it's enough to seem perfect to their customers. By stopping short of perfection, they find a profitable balance between quality and costs.
To find this balance, they often look to their peers to discover the "best practices" of their industry: How far can we go and still seem perfect? By how far can we stop short? Businesses find it profitable to stop short at the middle ground of excellence because perfection costs too much.
But is it profitable for Christians to stop short at the middle ground of excellence where costs are low, balanced somewhere between paganism and obedience? Not at all! While in business it's profitable to seem perfect, in the spiritual realm it's merely comfortable to seem perfect. It is never profitable.
Clearly, excellence isn't the same as obedience or perfection. The search for excellence leaves us overwhelmingly vulnerable to snare after snare since it allows room for mixture. The search for obedience or perfection does not.
Excellence is a mixed standard, while obedience is a fixed standard. We want to shoot for the fixed standard.

Satisfied with mere excellence, we stop short of God's standards. We move nearer our peers only to find distance from God.

In so many areas, we're often sitting together on the middle ground of excellence, a good distance from God. When challenged by His higher standards, we're comforted that we don't look too different from those around us. Trouble is, we don't look much different from non-Christians either.

                                   -excerpt from "Every Man's Battle" by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker

Sound familiar? How often do we have the heart of King Josiah, who immediately returned to obedience to God's standards, when God's long forgotten law was discovered? Josiah tore down EVERYTHING that was standing between him and God.

Are we seeing how far we can go and still be called a Christian?

I'm guilty. But by the grace of God, may it no more be of me.

Happy 27th, Luvins! What a difference a partner-in-crime can make.  You are my BEST friend, Juna, and I'm so glad that you're MINE!  

Happy Birthday, hot stuff...

...never have any time to post on this thing anymore. maybe i just have more of a life now...;p

one headline that caught my attention. yet another frustrating sign toward the feminization of our culture. kinda goes along with what you had to say a while ago, ben. our masculinity is getting "flushed"...

"Young women in Sweden, Germany and Australia have a new cause: They want men to sit down while urinating. This demand comes partly from concerns about hygiene -- avoiding the splash factor -- but, as Jasper Gerard reports in the English magazine The Spectator, "more crucially because a man standing up to urinate is deemed to be triumphing in his masculinity, and by extension, degrading women." One argument is that if women can't do it, then men shouldn't either. Another is that standing upright while relieving oneself is "a nasty macho gesture," suggestive of male violence.

A feminist group at Stockholm University is campaigning to ban all urinals from campus, and one Swedish elementary school has already removed them. In Australia, an Internet survey shows that 17 percent of those polled think men ought to sit, while 70 percent believe they should be allowed to stand. Some Swedish women are pressuring their men to take a stand, so to speak. Yola, a 25-year-old Swedish trainee psychiatrist, says she dumps boyfriends who insist on standing. "What else can I do?," said her new boyfriend, Ingvar, who sits."

_____________________________________

Then there's something new to be excited about: if you're roaming around dallas on an empty stomach, but only have pesos left in your pocket, have no fear! you can just buy a pizza... http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/1/8/170609.shtml

_____________________________________

And now, I'd like to give the Florida Gators a big THANK YOU for making my week! Thank you so much for not only throttling my most hatest team, the OSU Schmuckeyes, but completely EMBARASSING them on the field and by throwing their undeafeted season down the toilet. For one night at least, it was a blast being a Gator fan.

 Is it a extremely shallow that my last two posts have been about two of my favorite sports teams? Ask me if I care....;p My Tigers knocked the big bad Yanks OUT of the playoffs, despite the fact that the whole stupid media had declared over and over again that this year's Yankees have the best lineup EVER in baseball. Goes to show (once again...), that great pitching beats "great" hitting anyday. Here're some pics for your viewing enjoyment, Kar-dawg *cough*:

detroit's ss, carlos guillen, showin' some double play skills

detroit's outfielders livin' it up

hey a-rod! need a tissue???

 
let's keep the dream alive, fellows!