Son Eric and Grandson Ethan had the privilege today of going one-on-on with Magic Johnson! Take a look.
How Cool is That???
Observations of Early Adult Life Groups
[Note: before reading this, please review my “cavaet” under Pages in the column on the right.]>
Observations about Life Groups
The following are general observations on my part and are not intended to represent any specific people I know. Not every characteristic fits neatly and exclusively within a single life group.
1. Out of High School and into college (or the world)
1.1. New measure of freedom – sense of release from bondage
1.2. No longer forced to go to school – even if going to college, attendance is usually not mandatory.
1.3. Get a job – if going to college it may be part-time. But this job is not generally considered to be a career so little sense of loyalty to this (these) employer(s).
1.4. “Adult” – at least legally
1.5. Live with parents
1.6. Ready to live it up and/or change the world
1.7. Diversification of interests – now that they are free to choose, they begin to focus on the interests and activities they like, splintering themselves from groups that previously held them together.
1.8. Active lifestyle
1.9. If their commitment to the Lord is not their own, they will drop out of church. (second or third chair)
2. Out of College & on their own (single adults) – some high school-only grads may move relatively quickly into this group.
2.1. Real adulthood begins
2.2. Get or need full-time job – but can be flexible with it. It’s not a tragedy if they lose or leave it.
2.3. Make own decisions
2.4. Rent
2.5. Certain degree of flexibility
2.6. Available for short term missions (job permitting)
3. Marriage
3.1. Frequently able to maintain nearly the same activities as before marriage (just doing it together – hopefully)
3.2. Decisions shared with spouse (or should be)
3.3. Most activities are as a couple
3.4. Fewer activities with the guys/girls
3.5. Both spouses usually work
3.6. Rent, but hope for home of their own. May be saving for home.
4. Children Enter
4.1. Couples who have been able to continue much of their pre-marriage activity levels find those activities suddenly grind to a halt when they have children. It’s not that activity slows down. Rather, it increases and is re-directed towards the child or children.
4.2. Activity outside the home gets drastically cut.
4.3. Employment becomes more critical, while the family drops to a single or single and a half income.
4.4. The couple begins to adjust to family life.
4.5. More room is needed for the family.
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5. Variations (many of these tend to avoid the church)
5.1. Experimentation
5.1.1. Sex
5.1.2. Drugs
5.2. Living together
5.3. Children outside marriage
5.4. Divorce
6. General
a. Discovering the difficulties of adulthood
b. Relationships with parents
i. Carry-overs from youth
Novelaires – More music
As of yesterday I have a total of 22 songs posted to www.novelaires.crockermedia.com, with about 25 more available to prepare and post. One of the members from the early 1960’s, Roger Jones, sent a list of eleven more songs to add to the list of ones the either performed or had ready to perform. The list is now at 77.
Gary
New Novelaires Web site!
I have finally started to put together a web site for the Novelaires quartet in all its variations (Crocker Boys, 3 Mistakes, Over the Hill Gang, etc). So far it’s just a start with a Christmas song (Winter Wonderland) recorded in 1985 in a practice session at Dad’s home. Take a look & a listen at novelaires.crockermedia.com. Note that none of the links in the navigation panel on the left go anywhere yet. That’s just an idea of my plans for the site.
Another of their songs can be heard at www.CrockerMedia.com (Whispering Grass).
Enjoy!
Gary
The NeXt Bible Learning Environment
I want to put in a plug for the NeXt Bible Learning Environment at http://www.NeXtBible.org. It is a great resource for in-depth Bible Study. For a quick look at its features click here. And it’s FREE!
While you’re there, check out the sermon illustrations on forgiveness.
“and forgive us … as we forgive…”
Charles Stanley this morning in his series on the Ways of God spoke on the topic, “He Forgives Our Sin.” We typically listen to his InTouch telecast as we are getting ready for church on Sunday mornings.
What jumped out at me this morning was his relating the portion of the Model Prayer (aka The Lord’s Prayer) that asked, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matthew 6:12).
Dr. Stanley pointed out that we are asking the Father to forgive us in the same manner that we forgive others. So, if we are not forgiving someone, we are actually telling God not to forgive us. Our walk and fellowship with the Lord are therefore hindered. BTW, it doesn’t help to avoid saying the Lord’s Prayer. We are instructed to forgive just as Christ has forgiven us, Ephesians 4:32. So not forgiving others is disobedience. This is true whether they deserve or ask for that forgiveness.
Holy Spirit and Prayer – What difference do they make?
I’ve been re-reading, after several decades, Edith Schaeffer’s L’Abri in which she quotes her husband Francis Schaeffer. “Supposing we had awakened today to find everything concerning the Holy Spirit and prayer removed from the Bible-that is, not removed the way liberals would remove it, but that God had somehow really removed everything about prayer and the Holy Spirit from the Bible. What difference would it make practically between the way we worked yesterday and the way we work today, and tomorrow? What difference would it make to the majority of Christians’ practical work and plans? Aren’t most plans laid out ahead of time? Isn’t much work done by human talent, energy and clever ideas? Where does the supernatural power of God have a real place?”
Very good question! How are we living as believers in the God of the Bible that is any different from the way an agnostic or atheist lives?
I’m afraid I find myself most consistently living as a practical atheist.
Lord, make my life a demonstration that You, the Personal-Infinite God are really there.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
A blessed and Happy Thanksgiving to you all from Gary & Lynda Crocker.
Theme of the Bible: “Trust Me!”
The overall theme of the Bible can be summarized as God saying,
- I created you.
- I am holy.
- Your rebellion against me is serious!
- You need Me.
- Trust Me.
This obviously leaves out a lot of detail, but the essence is there. Many of the ‘problems’ of Scripture fall into place, at least for me, with this basic outline. I’ll try to develop this in coming weeks. (See my caveat under “Pages” in the upper right column.)
Starting Point
Starting points are important.
The options for our conclusions are dependent upon our initial presuppositions. We disallow some results by decisions we make consciously or unconsciously at the beginning.
If it is decided at the start that all must be explained without any reference to a transcendent God, a transcendant God will not be found at the conclusion. If it is predetermined that there can be no intelligent design, miracles, virgin birth, or resurrection, then any evidence or testimony in their favor must be interpreted in some other way.
It seems to me that the best approach at the beginning is to leave all possible conclusions available and only rule them out as the evidence itself makes it necessary.
The naturalist would jump on that statement and claim that the use of the word “possible” would rule out any activity on the part of God because any such activity would be considered miracles, which are by definition impossible. But on what basis do we impose such restrictions on him? If a transcendent God did, in fact, create all there is, should we not expect that “possible” for Him should not be defined by what is possible within that creation? Would He not have the right to set up restrictions on His creation to which He is not Himself bound?
We must understand that it is important in an attempt to determine the way things are, and how they have come to be as they are, that we begin at the right place. That place should include, at least at the start, all potential results of our investigation, including the possibility for the need for faith at some level.
Please understand that I don’t start here with a clean slate. I have drawn some conclusions, some of which I consider set in my mind. Does that mean I have a closed mind? Perhaps on some points I do. I have, at least for myself, settled some questions:
- That there is a God
- That He has communicated to us through the Bible
- That He became a human being in order to die as payment for our sin.
- That He rose from the dead
- That we can become His children and have eternal life by trusting in that payment
But I do still have some questions, some of which might raise some evangelical eyebrows. I consider myself to be evangelical. What follows is a list of thoughts I’ve been accumulating about taking a fresh look at our paradigms, presuppositions and the boxes that tend to contain us.
Presuppositions, Boxes, paradigms, open minds, learning from history and records of prior learning and development:
- How do we free our minds enough to discover new ideas without abandoning the accumulated knowledge of history, science, philosophy, technology, etc.?
- How do we do so in such a way that we correct the errors in our accumulated knowledge, etc.?
- No one, except an infant has a clean slate, and even theirs are not really empty at birth. They have learned their mother’s heartbeat, at a minimum before they leave the womb. As soon as they do, we begin to mark their slates – not always neatly – with information, some of which they must know to survive and get along in their culture.
- We need to take advantage of what we already know, and gather what others have learned. At the same time we need to adjust our knowledge to the truth when we discover error in our understanding.
- We need to recognize that we have blind spots in our thinking and do all we can to see into them.
- The mere fact that we were born into a particular path of learning, of choices and of training, does not make that path correct. We need to be especially cautious of our own beliefs because of the danger of hanging onto them only because they are ours. This does not mean that we should automatically dump those beliefs and start over. We really can’t do that. We have to start where we are. But we should be making a special effort to test our understanding with an open mind against other viewpoints. We don’t want to hold onto errors just because we grew up in them or because they are culturally (i.e. politically) correct. (We shouldn’t abandon them for those reasons either.) This is not to divorce ourselves from our cultural background. We also need to discern what issues are really important and which don’t matter.
- Not every issue is “either, or.” Consider a “both, and” option. But don’t force that either.
- Once a thought is planted, it is very difficult, if not impossible to uproot it and disregard it entirely or to pretend as if we never heard it. “You cannot un-ring a bell.”
[Cleaned up and modified on 7/30/20.]