EDIT ADD:
Noah HAS been diagnosed Autistic. He had an appointment this morning. There is a lot to say about it. Don’t feel much like typing it all out…mostly ’cause I think Christy will a little later. Stay tuned.

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John 8:50
“I am not seeking glory for myself, but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge.”
—–

Wow. Even Jesus didn’t seek glory. Only the Heavenly Father does…makes me or anyone else who seeks to take the claim or glory away from God seem like a fool…not even God’s SON was looking for glory…wow.

Make sure you turn on your lights and stock up on candy. The worst thing we can do is turn ourselves off from the world tonight. Put chairs outside and make sure people know they are welcome at your house. This is not a time for those who love Christ to go off and hang out with only each other and forsake their neighborhoods…you have the opportunity to build relationships with some folks tonight. It’s built in. They’re coming by your house…take advantage of it!

Show love. Be salt and light!

Christy and I went to Dinner Rally last night at APU. It’s a big dinner and scholarship fundraiser for the shcool–their biggest one of the year.
OK, we’ve been before, we’ve performed in it before, but it’s never been as good as it was last night. I was so inspired by the way God has been moving in that school. It was amazing to hear all the things that are going on and to hear from the people that were a part of those things. It was absolutely amazing to see God’s handiwork displayed in the lives of the faculty and students at the school. I’ve never seen such a commitment to excellence and (the theme for the year) serving God “outside the lines”. They talked about the fact that 600 faculty and students from APU went for 7 days to help serve Katrina victims, partnering with an additional 600 people (1200 total) from the surrounding community. The Red Cross held the biggest single training event in the history of the Red Cross in APU’s Event Center for those that were traveling to help Katrina victims. It was monumental.
They also honored Dr. and Mrs. Grant and another couple (the Hamlow’s) who had a combined 156 years of service for the school (that’s about 40 years each…). Amazing to see that type of dedication in one place to the Lord’s work.

Dudes, seriously. I was so moved by God’s blessing on the school that I actually donated money…I couldn’t help not to. I wasn’t planning on it…but I know I’ll never feel any way about an institution the way that I feel about APU. I love it. It was life-changing. It is a place that continues to honor Jesus Christ in what it does and God just keeps blessing it….

Quick facts:
–4,100 undergrad students, 4,000 grad students.
–Fastest growing private univeristy in North America.
–4,000 applicants every year for their 1,100 freshman spots.
–$16,000,000 given out every year in scholarships. (yes, that’s sixteen million dollars).
–There are these hilarious identical Polish triplets in the grad music program who played a Vivaldi violin concerto last night. Hearing them speak was so funny…

Cute-as-a-patoot things that Nathaniel has done lately:

Yesterday, when he got in trouble for disobeying, I sent him to time-out. After a while, I went in (I had already talked to him about WHY he was in trouble) and as soon as I got in the door he said, “Daddy…I asked God to help me to obey…”. SO cute.

Today, he got up SO early (as is becoming a little habit…) and wanted to play Super Mario Kart (N64). I said yes, but we were still in bed. So he keeps coming back in, “I need help turing on the lights”, “I’m hungry”, etc… every 10 seconds. So I told him to stop coming in, and if he came in again he’d have to go back to bed. So I wake up probably 10 minutes later, thinking, “I should go play with my son”…and he’s sitting outside my door. He says “I was waiting for you to play with me…”. OH he’s so precious.
Turns out, he couldn’t figure out how to get the VCR on the right channel to play…hee hee.

I love my family SOOOO much!

So I did a devotional at choir about the passage in John where John the Baptist says a rather famous quote about Jesus, “He must become greater, I must become less.”
It’s a great passage of scripture. I took a humilty and authenticity angle on it. John knew his place in God’s plan, and He knew Jesus’ place, too. It’s a good lesson in putting Christ first, and doing it in a way that is not false–I don’t like false humility.

Then I ran across another scripture in John that I thought was cool…it’s from a time when people are questioning Jesus about where His teaching is from–John 7:18

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He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.
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This speaks a great deal about your heart and motives. I love it…

OK- so I had this whole huge thing typed out yesterday about all of this, and obviously, it was lost. I accidentally hit QUIT on the web browser instead of close window…anyway, this is the best I could do in recreating it with about a third of the info…sorry.

We did have a HUGE orchestra last night. Probably 40 people, all rehearsing the Christmas tunes to perform with the MPC…yeah, it was cool. It didn’t sound great, and there were lots of mistakes and all, but it was really cool to do that. The WW section rocked, and so did the trumpets and tenor saxes…good job. Everyone else will come along in no time. It was an honor to direct. I’m looking forward to the time we’ll have together over the next month…yay for orchestra!

We get free photo space now. I don’t like animals all that much, so I thought this was hilarious…

Edit ADD: I didn’t win. Christy did. But that’s better than Mike.
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Great!

Only a few hours of sleep again…hmmm…

We made a quick trip to Orange County last night, so for driving I had a triple venti nonfat Caramel Macchiato (that’s 3 shots of espresso). Then for the drive home I had a triple grande nonfat Carmel Macchiato (that’s another 3 shots). So all in all I had 6 shots of espresso in about a 5 hour span. That can’t be good.
Well, at least I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel and kill myself and my family. It’s a trade off…and I was drinking BUCKETS of water also, so I didn’t stay dehydrated for too long..

Nathaniel and I played a little more Super Mario, he’s still not that good…but I’m remembering more from oh so long ago…

I’m planning on winning at NERTZ again tonight.

Hmmm…

We finally got the SNES I bought on ebay. Seriously, I paid for this thing on Sept 30th. I think we got the extra-slow shipping or something, ’cause honestly, 3 weeks? Geez… So SNES rocks, and it works fine. I’ve been playing Super Mario All Stars with Nathaniel and mostly playing Super Mario 3…the funny thing is that Nathaniel really stinks!!! HA! I almost got frustrated with him yesterday until I realized HE’S ONLY FOUR YEARS OLD!!!
But I must say–he’s SO good at Mario 64, it was a little shocking to see how horrible he was at Super Mario 3. And he knew it…”Daddy, you can have an extra-long turn ’cause I’m not very good…”

heee hee heee!! I told him to keep practicing and he’ll get better…

We went to see a play at Lamb’s Players last night, and it was good. I must say I was a little suprised at how good it was. I’m not sure why…but I was. It is always a treat to see excellence in the arts, no matter where and in what form.

I only got a few hours of sleep last night. I didn’t mean to stay up, but I just did. Maybe it was that Frappuccino I had at 10PM…

…(so sleepy)…

Yeah for the return of Tina Fey to Weekend Update!

Edit ADD: So, what does make Joey so bad?? ‘Cause I just can’t put my finger on it…
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Just a couple of nuggets for now:

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John 3:30
He must become greater; I must become less.
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John the Baptist talking about he and Jesus. Jesus must become greater and John (or in our case, you or me) must become less. This should be a foundational belief or core attitude value for a Christ-follower. Let Jesus become greater in you, and let YOU become less in you. Only then will we be more like Christ–by our surrender and admittal that Jesus has control of us, and that HE is the most important part of me.

—-
Luke 18:16
But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
—-

Coming to Christ like a child requires displaying four characteristics:
1) Total Dependence
2) Frank Openness
3) Complete Sincerity
4) Full Trust

Wow. I have these written on a little card that has been in my pocket for like, a month. I look at it all the time and wonder-”am depending Totally on Christ?” etc…it is a great reminder that the attitude I have with my heavenly Father should be similar to the attitude that my 4-year-old has with me. Total Dependence, Frank Opennes, Complete Sincerity, and Full Trust.

On another note:
In my archiving of SNL sketches, I have taken to finding the exact date of that show and catagorizing the clips by date and host. So my folder looks like this…

1990 01/20 Christopher Walken
1991 03/16 Michael J Fox
1993 09/25 Charles Barkley
1997 01/11 Kevin Spacey
1997 05/19 Pamela Anderson
1998 02/14 Roma Downey
1998 02/07 John Goodman
1998 05/09 David Duchovny
1999 Best of Steve Martin

and so on…
not the entire episodes, mind you. Just the funny parts, imho.
Yeah, organization rocks!

Had a good small group lesson last night. The speaker guy on the DVD was talking about being WHO God wants you to be. He spoke from the scripture in Matthew 13:44-46
———
44″The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
45″Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
———

Basically he was talking about the fact that these guys both sold everything they had so they could obtain the thing that was worth the MOST. For instance- you like antiques. You go to an estate sale, and unfortunately it is an all or nothing sale…but you find an original manuscript of a book written during the civil war that is worth a couple million dollars. The estate is selling for $350,000. So you go and sell your house and your car and everything you possibly can (yay ebay!) to get enough $$ to buy the whole estate. Now you’ve sacrificed to get the estate, but obviously, you’ve obtained something worth far more than what you sacrificed. So it is with the Kingdom of God.

And this isn’t just a reward we’ll get eventually. The Kingdom of God is something we will experience here on earth, during our normal, daily lives. So the initial sacrifce was big, but the reward FAR outways the sacrifice. It seems so obvious, yet we are not setting our eyes on the reward, but too often, we set our eyes on the sacrifice, and we complain about how big it is, get sidetracked (easy enough) and never experience the rewards of truly following Christ.

Anyway- I thought it was a great lesson…and I stole that analogy from the DVD, but you probably figured that out already…

Leanne says she’s coming to choir! Cool! Hip-hip-hooray! Three cheers to Leanne! I mean, it’s only like a 3 hour drive or something (with traffic). I’m excited.

Random notes:
I love iTunes and Apple…bought an episode of LOST last week that I missed. It was excellent…

I love Jamba Juice…their smoothies are oh so wonderful and tasty and healthy (with all the extra stuff I put in…)

I love…carpet…I love lamp.

Another EDIT ADD: I won at Nertz again! No excuses this time, Mike! It was a blowout! Mike stunk. Yay! My losing streak is definately over…Check Mike’s blog, we’ll see if he even posts the scores…

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EDIT ADD: Thanks for everyone’s nice comments about Noah. I’ll keep you updated.
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Yes, I did buy a pink shirt. But only one–the other one is orange. Christy doesn’t really like them, but the sales girl at The Gap really did–and I did, too–so I went ahead and bought it anyway. I mean, seriously, these shirts were $4.97 each. Even if everyone makes fun of me like my wife says they will, it’s only $9.94 out of my pocket for 2 shirts from the Gap!!! I mean, the cashier rings me up and almost has a heart attack because the final price was so low. And NO, I don’t think people will make fun of me, I think the shirts are awesome! And now maybe Chris Holz won’t think I wear the same shirt every week to choir practice.

On another note, I’ve been moving my DVR’d SNLs over to my MAC G5. Only the funniest sketches. And I finally found the right settings on iMovie to make a FANTASTIC mpeg clip w/o distortion or making it too small. I’m so happy! It’s been fun to archive some of the best comedic moments from SNL. Now I’ll have them forever!

Oh yeah-Kicking and Screaming came out on DVD (Will Farrell movie about a kids soccer team). It’s not getting great reviews, but I thought it was hilarious, and it’s only like PG. So Elf, and this movie are his non-dirty funny comedies…oh yeah, Bewitched isn’t dirty either–but again, not good reviews. I LOVE Kicking and Screaming–it’s hilarious–go rent it NOW!