David's Bible Blog

Where to Find Me

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:46:46 GMT

I am hanging out over at www.bellevueteachers.com doing some blogging, podcasting, etc.

Come and visit us over there.

Cross Lighting 2000

Sun, 06 May 2007 13:15:00 GMT

My friend Bill Bryan mentioned to me that there used to be a link to the Cross Lighting event we had at church in the year 2000. I found it here. It is on my home server so it may be a bit sluggish but not too bad.

Also there some old mp3 audio files of Sunday School lessons here.

Thanks Bill for pointing that out to me!

Training Pastors in Nicaragua

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 10:48:52 GMT

Walt Morgan is a good friend of mine and is president of the Baptist Theological Seminary of Nicaragua. This week, I am helping Walt raise support for the Seminary among some churches in the Atlanta and East Tennessee area and then back in Memphis later this week.

Here is a brief video introduction to the Seminary:

Respect for God

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:35:09 GMT

My friend Michael Earls commented on my last post and expressed appreciation for my respect for God. (Hi Micheal, good to hear from you!) I’ve been thinking about respect for God. First let me say that respect for God is a a rare thing in today’s world and I know Michael too respects God. So many people have no respect for God because they do not believe in Him. Or if they do believe in God, he is not occupying much place in their thoughts. So I really appreciate Michael noticing that and it is something everyone should take a step towards. But respect for God is not a final destination rather it is just a step or a move towards God. Although God is worthy of respect because respect has the meaning of being honored and esteemed, somehow respect does not rise to the level of adequately describing my attitude toward God.

What attitude then glorifies God? I’d like to say that I love God but even that sounds like too much like me giving something to Him. (I do love Him, I’m just trying to find the attitude that really glorifies God.) You see God is the source of everything; He is always the giver and never the receiver as if He needed anything from us. I might say and do in fact fear God because of his holy righteousness. That’s good and true too certainly in the sense that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. (Don’t you fear someone who could squash you in an instant and moreover knows all your secrets?) Let’s see, how about grateful…yes that works too because of God’s great mercy. Mercy is the part that keeps God from squashing me or making me pay for all those dirty dark secrets that only He and I know about.

But someone did pay. God paid. God absorbed the righteous wrath of God against my sin. Wait a minute. Did I say that right? God paid God’s penalty? Yes of course, Jesus Christ paid it all. And all the while God the Son was hanging on that cross suffering for my sake, it was God the Father in heaven pouring out his wrath. That way he is both just and the one who justifies. God’s wrath was spent not withdrawn.

How do I know all this is true? Of course I got it all out of the Bible. But God provided proof by raising Jesus from the dead. The ressurection is the proof that God is satisfied.

That’s why respect, love, fear, and gratefulness as attitudes toward God don’t seem enough. Oh they are necessary and right. I suppose gratefulness comes the closest because it describes my receiving instead of my giving. But when I talk about God and see His work in everything around me including in the budding forth of spring foliage and flowers, I am delighted. Delight, yes that’s the word. I am really delighted and soul-satisfied when I consider God. And I am not giving him anything in my delight rather I am soaking it all in: His love toward me, his mercy toward me, his goodness all around me, his magnificence in his creation.

He made me and he made you to delight in his glory!

On Cue

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 03:06:00 GMT

I was out walking in the forest last week (March 23) and took this picture of a ridge and a ravine. The weather was delightful and you could tell the forest was waking up from it’s winter slumber.

Nine days later (yesterday April 1) I was walking the same trail and took a picture of the same ridge (below).

Now I was standing a litte further up in the second shot but you can tell it is the same location by examining the roots of some of the trees hugging the ridge.

The astonishing thing I’m sure you notice is the difference in green foliage. A little rain, a little warmth, longer days and the program kicks in to high gear. I say program because that is what it is, it does this every year automatically. Such astonishing beauty and unbelievable and complex innerworkings of sap rising and photosynthisis. I’m glad I got to see this as I ponder God’s unfathomable excellence in His design for life.

Psalm 8:1,3–4

O Lord, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth, Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?

Backpacking!

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:18:00 GMT

Genesis 1:31 (NKJV)

Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

I went backpacking with some wonderful friends this past weekend to the Richland Creek Wilderness area just north of Russellville AR. What a delightful trip and considering what I've been through, a miracle! God is good! Three Davids went (should have been four David D. :-) and Roxanne and Tiffany and Kyle.

The water was high and so we could not make the second stream crossing like we had planned but no matter, the campsite we stayed at for two nights was delightful and we were close to a bend in the river with a beach and within a short (although rugged) hike to Richland Creek Falls and Twin Falls. It was cold the first night and the temp was in the low twenties when we woke up Sunday morning. We day hiked to the falls that afternoon and said our goodbyes' to Dave and Kyle who had to head on back home that afternoon. It rained in the middle of the night Sunday night and it was only in the thirties Monday morning. David S. and I determined that we could cross the stream at about thigh deep to go see the twin falls before we broke camp to head on back home. After a quick breakfast and finally some warm coffee after that cold crossing, we packed it up and headed out of the woods for the two mile trek and final stream crossing. The trail was wet and muddy in places so we gingerly scrambled over the rocks and narrow ledges and arrived at our car early afternoon. Two nights in the woods and base camping does not sound all that much but I was so encouraged and filled with gratitude for my friends who spurred me on and gave me a new start in backpacking adventures.

Check out the album on bubbleshare by clicking here. Dave and David, you can download a zip file of the pictures when you go to the album. They should be a decent size, but if there are any you want the fullsize original of, let me know and I'll email them to you.

Link Blogs

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:32:52 GMT

Note that I have removed from the front page the "Notable Links" that I post here from time to time. They are also removed from the main RSS and Atom feeds for those who use aggregators.

Of course they are still available as two separate "Link Blogs" on the menu on the right side. You can subscribe separately to those "Link Blogs" on those pages.

The Misc Link Blog contains items I want to save or find interesting that anybody might find interesting. The Link Blog for Developers contains items that would be of interest only to other software developers.

Just trying to reduce the clutter and noise from the main page.

New Look, works with Firefox too

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:32:10 GMT

I was informed by a visitor (thanks Matthew!) that the site was not working right with FireFox 2.0 (embarrassed look :-). Anyway, I’ve been working on cleaning up the CSS stylesheets today and it all seems to work now in both browsers.

That explains the new spartan look. I may dress it up later but it’s growing on me so I may leave it for a while.

Of making many books there is no end

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 02:18:41 GMT

Ecclesiastes 12:12

And further, my son, be admonished by these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh.

I buy lots of books. The two main genres are books about software development and books with a religious theme. For novels, I usually buy from Audible so that I can enjoy them while driving or walking or just sitting in the hot tub. Anyway, I am a very good customer of Amazon. I just cannot resist the latest book on some new technology. What amazes me about books about computer programming is that I am never satisfied. Typically I graze through the book looking for some little tidbit of information I can use or that I am unfamiliar with. Most of the time, I find two or three little things that I learn from the book and then I am done with it. I never use them as a reference manual. Google has replaced that.

So why do I keep buying these very expensive books (they are very proud of them at $50 each)? I guess I justify that the two or three tidbits of new information is worth it.

Comment Spam and Google juice

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 01:23:17 GMT

No big deal but I had to shut down the site for about 36 hours while I put some protection in against comment spam.

Somebody evidently found the site and was using it to post a bunch of links to other sites. Nothing trashy as far as I could tell without clicking on the links but still a bunch of gibberish in the comments. The motivation probably was in hopes of getting some “Google juice.” Google’s page-rank system uses a measurement of the number of sites that link to a given site to measure that site’s importance in the Google search results. The more important the site, the higher up in the search list it goes. So it is not only how many sites link to a site being measured for rank but their relative ranks as well. If a high ranking site links to a site, the linked site will increase in stature in Google’s page-rank system.

I’ve had enough high ranking sites link to me so that David’s Bible Blog makes it to the top of the search results for some queries. For example, if you search for “Bible Blog” (click here to try it) I am number two. And if you search for “David Carroll” (again click here to try it) I am number one!