Reflections on a Purpose-Driven Life

It’s been just about a month since Faith and I finished the “40 days to a Purpose Driven Life” We were invited by our neighbors to participate in their church’s program of “40 days” Each day we read the assigned chapter, and occasionally Faith and I would discuss our thoughts about a particular reading and how it affected us individually and as a couple. I believe that the book, in and of itself, is a great read for most christians. For beginning christians, it provides a great foundation for learning about and practicing christianity. The real value of participating in a “40 days” program comes from the fellowship opportunities within the small-group sessions. Our small group met each thursday at our neighbor’s house where we would watch a short presentation about the previous week’s readings and then a group discussion based upon the accompanying study materials. As each of the members of the small group began to share their insights and feelings and prayers, a deep bond was beginning to form that is difficult to describe. Being able to debate various points with people of varying backgrounds and perspectives led to a much deeper understanding of much of the material.

So what does a purpose driven life look like? This entry would be incomplete if I didn’t at least touch on the core content of the book and the program. Rick Warren points us to the five purposes that we accept when we become Christians:

1. * Worship - you were planned for God’s pleasure.
2. * Fellowship - you were formed to be part of God’s family.
3. * Discipleship - you were created to become like Christ.
4. * Ministry - you were shaped for God’s service.
5. * Mission - you were made to tell others about Christ.

We have quite a long way to go in our walk with Christ, but thankfully that first step has been taken. Our lives are so much richer, so much fuller and so much happier. If you think that you might find this book interesting, you should see if your church is taking part in the “40 days” and if not, well, maybe they should. If you don’t currently attend a church, that’s okay. A quick look around your own community will most likely find a church or two (or three or four) that is hosting this program and I am quite certain that they would be very happy to have you participate in the program with them. (yes, even as an ‘outsider’- after all, that’s what Faith and I were when we were took part in this)

For more information check out http://www.purposedriven.com and http://www.purposedrivenlife.com

SpamFlood

* So the system was down most of Sunday and early Monday thanks to some idiot spammers. Turns out that one of the sites that I host had (note the use of the word ‘had’) a cgi script that allowed people to send email to him via a web-based form interface. The spammers figured out a way to utilize a flaw in the script that allowed them to send thousands upon thousands of emails through the system. As many of you know, the box that hosts this site and the one in question (as well as a few others) is a modest, ten year old Sun Microsystems Sparc 20 with NetBSD for its OS. As a testimony to the reliability of the system, it never completely crashed. Of course response times were being measured in hours… So, I did in fact have to reboot the system in order to regain control of the mail facilities. I had to clear the queues and disable the cgi script until such time that I could provide a fix or workaround. I won’t go into specific details here on just how the cgi script was abused (since I don’t have a fix at the moment) Perhaps once I fix the issue, I may share the reset of the gory details. I will say that for the most part, the script did a good job of validating most of the input it was accepting. If you really want details, send me an email and I might be willing to discuss the details, but please don’t post comments asking about the specifics as they will be ignored.

Sold!

* Praise the Lord! With a total of thirteen days on the market, our house has sold! There were about six different showings yesterday, and we received a total of four different bids! The winning bid actually came in over our asking price! Now we just have to finish up with all of the various inspections. The local fire department came by last week for a safety inspection. We failed that one because we didn’t have our address numbers on the house itself. (the numbers have always been on the mailbox) No big deal there, I put up the numbers next to the door and the safety inspector came by, noticed that the numbers were up and presented us with our safety certificate! I still need to finish up painting Logan’s room. Yep, the wild dark blue ceiling is gone, replaced with a more neutral white. We told our real estate agent to ask the buyers what color they would like in that bedroom. I figure, if I’m painting anyway, I might as well put in the color that they want, and maybe save them from having to paint over whatever arbitrary color I would put in there on my own. We have a lot of stuff already packed up, but there is a great deal left before we can move. We just might hire a moving company this time to make things go a bit easier. Especially since Faith is pregnant, and with the three boys, it’ll probably be a good idea to let someone else handle as much of the move as we can afford.

In a way, it’s a bit sad to be saying goodbye to this house… There are so many memories here. Getting remarried on the back porch the day we moved in… All the different projects, from remodeling the bathrooms, the landscaping, building and then re-building Logan’s fort in the back yard… Good times were had here, that’s for sure.