You Let Me Fall!

I grew up on a dirt road for most of my childhood before the county paved it. Each house in our area was required to have at least an acre of land to avoid crowding and becoming like a subdivision neighborhood. Our road dead ended into our neighbors’ driveway, so there was not much traffic down this road. We could get out and play cork ball or wiffle ball without fear of many cars. That little stretch of dirt road carries some fond memories. Sometimes, my brothers and I would have to get out and push my dad’s truck up and down the road so he could pop the clutch to get it started. Those were the good old days.

One of my favorite memories on that road was learning to ride a bike. Maybe it is one of my favorites because once you learn the skill it is yours for life. Like any beginner on a bicycle, we started of with tricycles at a very early age then moved up to the bike with training wheels. There comes a time though when the training wheels have to come off. There comes a point in everybody’s life when something that was helping you is now a hindrance to making you better. When a baby gets old and big enough, you have to remove the crib and allow him/her to sleep in a bed or else the poor thing will soon be jammed in there head to toe and sleep will be hindered. When sleep is hindered in children’s lives, growth will be stunted and you have literally retarded the natural growth process that God put in place. Keeping the training wheels of life on your child will not help, in fact, it will destroy.

As I learned to ride around on that bike and got very comfortable doing so, I wanted those training wheels to come off. When they did come off, mom or dad held on to the back of the seat and a handle bar to get me started. At some point though, they let go. I cannot remember how far down that old road they let go of my seat, but I did not realize it until it was time to turn around at the dead end. I did not know how to stop! I do remember thinking or yelling, “You let me go?!” I crashed. Oddly enough, I do not remember my parents ever having to help with the bike again. They got me to where I needed to be and had the love to let go. Thank you Mom and Dad and happy Father’s Day.

A Tribute to Mark Adams

When I saw this picture I immediately thought of Mark and the "Friday Smiles" he posts on his blog.  I hope this is worthy Mark!

Putting Degrees on Sin

Why do Christians put degrees on sin when there is absolutely no ground for this in the Bible? Maybe it is because everybody wants to think their lifestyle is okay as long as it does not get as bad as…fill in the blank. Putting degrees on sin really comes down to trying to justify the sin that is in your own life. Emerson Eggerichs, author of Love & Respect, wrote, "Self-righteousness can deceive you more than any other sin." I think that is a fair statement.

In order to “fulfill the royal law,” James wrote, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (2:8). James quoting from Leviticus 19:18 knew this was a pillar of the Jewish nation. This law that Moses gave to the Israelites was also reiterated by Jesus when asked by the rich young man, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Matt. 19:16, 19). Also, when a Pharisee tried to test Jesus, he asked, “‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’” (Matt. 22:36-40). If Jesus “goes all-in” with these two commandments, we had better pay some special attention to them.

When James brings up loving your neighbor as yourself, he does so in the context of showing partiality concerning sin. He wrote, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (2:10). When we put degrees on sin, we are acting as the Scribes and Pharisees acted. We are hypocrites just as they were when we point fingers at the sin in others’ lives without facing the sin that is in our own life! I am not suggesting that sinful behavior be left unhandled, but I am suggesting that putting degrees on sin by saying one sin is worse than another is wrong. We might not even realize we do it because we do not express it in words. Why then do we look down on the pregnant teenager or the homosexual? We unconsciously put degrees on sin. Stop it! Sin is sin and God hates it.

The Elevator

I subscribe to a newsletter through 48days.com.  This week's included a story that had me laughing and I thought it worthy to share with you readers:

An Amish boy and his father were visiting a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and back together again. The boy asked his father, "What is this father?" The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, "Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don't know what it is."

While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed, an old lady hobbled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened and the old lady shuffled between them and into a small room.

The walls closed and the boy and his father watched small circles of light with numbers above the wall light up. They continued to watch the circles light up in the reverse direction. The walls opened up again and a beautiful 24 year old woman stepped out. The father said to his son, "Jedediah, go get your Mother."

Four Mile Hill on iTunes

The Four Mile Hill podcast (our sermons) are now on iTunes!  Get your free download of iTunes for Mac and PC users at http://www.apple.com/itunes/.  You can then search "Four Mile Hill church of Christ" in the iTunes Store and get the latest free podcast post (or all of them) straight to your computer.  Burn it to a CD, upload it to your iPhone or iPod, or send the link to your friends.  Enjoy.

Aging

As I drove the cheese wagon this afternoon, I overheard some middle school kids looking at some coins and reading the dates on them.  One noticed a coin from 1999 and thought that was pretty cool, then they discovered one from 1984.  Their reply was, "Wooooh!  That's an oooold one!"  Yup that was the year before I was born.  I got a good laugh.

Cyberspace Sermons

The sermon I preached this morning can be heard from the player I posted at the top of this page using a site called podomatic.  You can also listen to Rick Wood's sermon on "Conversion" that he preached tonight at the 4 Mile Hill website.  There, you can also read my weekly article entitled, "Quick Draw."  We are trying our best to make this website a useful resource for people around the globe.  Hopefully, the website will get to the point where a free server can't handle all we want to do with it...that would be a good problem to have.  But for now, we're newbies at it, so we'll stick with Edublogs, which is a great sight for teachers to have for their class rooms as well.  Enjoy.

ESV Bible App

Look what I found through crossway.org.  It's an iPhone/iPod Touch App of the ESV Bible that allows you to use without internet access.  You can highlight, bookmark, search for key words, make personal notes, and best of all...it's FREE!  I hope you can find this useful.

Beauty in Technology

The 4 Mile Hill church of Christ is now e-mailing the weekly bulletin to those who desire to have it in digital format and archiving them on their website.  I'm pretty excited about having added this feature and want to thank my big bro, Bryan, for his guidance and encouragement in this process.  I hope everyone finds this beneficial.  Shoot me an e-mail at caseymcdonald@att.net if you want to be added to the e-mailing list.  Have a great weekend!

4 Mile Hill

Check out this coming Sunday's bulletin.  We are in the process of archiving bulletins from the past too.  I hope everybody is having a great end to the week...Happy Friday!