Marriage Advice: Refine Us

Being a young man who values his marriage, this refineus.org is gold! Refine Us is a blog by a couple who seperated and almost divorce a few years ago. They were a couple in ministry who had been married 10 years and had 3 kids. They were the couple you would least expect to have these issues.

In the blog, they walk through the 8 Things That Destroyed Our Marriage and then the 8 Things That Restored Our Marriage. Even if you’re not married yet, this is some great advice.

Safari 4 Beta

Being the technoholic that I am, I downloaded and installed Safari 4 Beta as soon as I heard about it. In the past, I’ve not been a huge Safari fan and would only use it to see how sites loaded and functioned compared to Firefox. It seemed like a average, simple browser. With that said, I had low expectations when I fired up Safari 4.

There are some great features included in this version. Top Sites is a visual bookmark implementation that suggests websites that you frequently visits. It also updates and includes a live preview and an graphic to let you know that the site has new content since last visited. Another feature that I really like is the Tabs-On-Top (as I call it). It saves screen real estate by putting the tabs where the window title was instead of below your bookmark toolbar.

Aside from some of the neat features taken from other browsers (Top Sites = Opera’s Speed Dial, Tabs-On-Top = Chrome’s tabs) that I love, Safari 4 is stinkin’ fast! It absolutely blows my Firefox 3 setup away. It’s not one of those “it’s faster on paper, but you can’t tell” things. Once you open it up, you’ll be able to tell the difference.

If you want some non-Apple stats on Safari 4, Mac Rumors posted an article with some tips and tricks as well as a link to speed test that CNet did.

Matthew 10:37-39

“Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Matthew 10:37-39

Wow. This is pretty intense. I feel super convicted. Often, I find myself practically loving other things more than Jesus. Not that I would say I love those things more, but my actions show it. Lord, help me love you more than anything else, even myself!

Are there things that you love more or put before Jesus?

Journey to the Cross

Growing up, I thought Lent was just something that the Catholics did. For the past three years, I’ve been coming back to this website for the Lenten season. There has been something profoundly spiritual and meaningful in taking part in this rich Christian tradition.

Journey to the Cross is a daily devotional website that walks through Lent through it’s individual devotions. The simple, serene environment of the website encourages a meditative and reflective demeanor. For those who are searching for a way to take part in the Lenten season, you’ll want to visit journeytothecross.org.

The Season of Lent

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of Lent. Lent is a 40 day period of preparation before Easter (Jesus’s resurrection). It is meant to be a period of fasting and praying, preparing out hearts to be right before Jesus on when we celebrate his resurrection. I want to challenge you guys to be fasting something seeking the Lord these next 40 days.

A great website that has a Lent devotional each day is Journey to the Cross. These devotionals walks you through this season of Lent.

I’d also ask each of you to consider fasting something significant to you. I think I may be fasting coffee, since it is a daily thing that I lean on to give me energy instead of the Lord. Let me know if you have any questions about Lent or any of this.

2 Peter 1:5-9

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
2 Peter 1:5-9

Man, the seriousness of this passage hit me today when I read it. One of my first observations about the passage is that there are certain steps that must be taken in order for a Christian not to be ineffective and unproductive in our faith. We must do something; we can’t just float on by without being intentional about our faith in Jesus.

The second thing that I made note of was that Peter considered the person who didn’t have these qualities growing in their life to have effectively forgotten that God has saved us. Holy crap! To forget that we have been cleansed from our past sins is the same as not believing that Christ died for our sins. That’s about the worst thing possible. I don’t want to be the person who is essentially not saved!

So, how do I avaoid that? Pray that the Lord would help develop these qualities (Christ-like character) in my life. And make every effort to act out these qualities.

Which of these qualities do you need to be working on today? What steps can you take to nuild these qualities up in your life?