SPCC Young Adults

Here are some upcoming YA events that need to be on your calendar!!!

.:: MOVIE NIGHT ::.
This Friday night - March 25
7pm
Location - Steve and Kim Ray’s house

And our movie IS…

.:: MAN NIGHT ::.
Friday night April 1
6pm
Location - Jason and Megan Linklater’s house
*Come ready for a night of hanging out, watching flicks and playing video games
**Bring your own raw animal flesh to cook there. Megan is making salad and dessert for us!
 

.:: LADIES NIGHT ::.
Friday night April 1 
7pm
Location - Tiffany (and Trevor) Gemmer’s house
*Prepare to let your proverbial hair down as the ladies watched Tangled together. 
 

I got this email this morning (Monday 3/21) and wanted to pass this on to all of you. Take a minute to read it, please. If this applies to you, please contact me knowing that it will be kept in the strictest of confidence.

~Mike

Dear SPCC Computer User:

The internet makes it incredibly easy to violate copyright law.  So easy, in
fact, that it’s possible to do so without even realizing it.  We’re in this
position right now, as a church, because of a program called Bit Torrent.
This is a file sharing program, commonly used to share large files such as
movies and music.  The problem is that virtually none of these files are
legal copies - something that many Bit Torrent users don’t even realize.
Nonetheless, whenever a computer containing Bit Torrent is connected to our
network, it begins automatically sharing its files, and SPCC effectively
becomes a distributor of stolen music and movies.

One copyright holder has traced an illegal copy of their work back to our
internet address, and sent us a legal warning that we must cease and desist.
We need to respond quickly, both to protect ourselves legally, but even more
to protect our testimony to the outside world.

I’d like to ask for everyone’s cooperation in the following:

1)  If you have Bit Torrent (or one of its clones, or any P2P software) on
your church PC, please deactivate it immediately.  Note that these programs
usually continue to run, even after you’ve closed their main window.  Look
for the little icon in the Task Bar, and click “exit”.  Better yet,
uninstall it.

2)  Communicate this message to any non-staff person who connects to the
church network from time to time.  Make it clear to them that they MUST NOT
be running this software while they are using our internet connection.
Byron and Mike, I’d especially solicit your help in this area, as this
software is especially popular in the under-30 age group.

Lastly, I’d appreciate your feedback if you locate a possible source of this
“leak”.  I don’t need names or apologies, I just need to be able to respond
to the legal folks and assure them that we have found and corrected the
problem.

Thanks for your assistance,

Ken

PS - OK, since you asked - the movie’s name was “Rat Race”.

If you haven’t taken the time, familiarize yourself with the new SPCC site and browse around. You can now subscribe to the sermon podcast! AND if you use a Reader, you can get the RSS feed!

~Mike

On Sunday night at our prayer and worship time, I mentioned a phrase that I have since taken some good-natured ribbing for. I used the term “ontological lightness.” My wife gives me a hard time about using “big” words all the time, but mostly I’m not even aware of it. Its not like I set out to lose people in my overly-beefy vocabulary. But since it came up again today, I thought I would take a moment to expound on it.

The Westminster Catechism states that the chief end of man is “to know God and enjoy Him forever.” I read that phrase and it just doesn’t take my breath away like it ought to. We hear “know God better” and we automatically think of another Bible study to attend, or going to buy a book on God’s attributes.

Think (think back for some of you) about your dating relationships, or engagement, or early years of marriage. When relationships are new, they tend to be flashy. But time has a way of wearing things, and that’s not necessarily bad. The newness always goes away. And hasn’t that happened with God? When we first came to Christ, it was new and exciting, but at some point the monotony of life brought the blahs to us. Jesus admonished the Ephesians in Revelation 3 that they had lost their first love, and that they needed to recapture it. So must we. The question is, “How?”

Check out this interesting little excerpt from 1 Kings:

“Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.  Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.”  Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

 But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”  And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.”  And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.  And the angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.”  And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.

 There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”  And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.”

When I came back to WA from Christmas break, I spent 10 days in an empty house. It was lonely. The first night Jen and the kids were home, we’d put them to bed, and were getting ready ourselves and I just laid there and listened. It was still, but it was a different kind of still. It was a stillness that had come on the heels of much noise and business. It was a much-appreciated stillness, and in it I could hear the things that had longed to hear for 10 long days – the sounds of my children snoring and my wife breathing beside me. It was a stillness that could only be appreciated in contrast to the noise.

Our lives are so busy and noisy. And we’re looking for God to be big and flashy. We get so caught up in the fires and earthquakes and wind that we fail to hear the whisper. We call ourselves human beings, but the truth is that most of us are human “doings.” Our identity is so wrapped up in what we do that it becomes almost impossible for us to be still. Like the feather floating along on the breeze, our minds are immediately distracted by any little wind of thought that comes along. Its hard for us to find our moorings and anchor in who we are in Christ instead of what we think we need to be doing for Christ.

Jesus says, “Come unto me, you who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest…” Sometimes spiritual progress is to serve and do, but that can only happen out of an anchored place deep in our hearts where the stillness of Christ’s peace reigns.

Take some time today to be still. Keep a pen and paper nearby. When your mind races to other things, write them down and then ask Jesus to refocus your attention. That piece of paper will still be there when you’re done. 

~ Mike