Having a Baby and Shutting Down

As most of you know by now, Michelle and I are pregnant!

Currently we are just over 14 weeks and looking great.

Also, I am no longer going to be posting on this blog site.

Michelle and I are combining forces on one blog that you can find here.  It’s completely undeveloped and bare but from now on, that is where I will post when I do post and my wife, Michelle, will be posting as well for entire family fun.

Thanks to all of you who read this and posted comments.  Come join us at http://thejonesinators.blogspot.com

Peace out suckas,

Seth

Piper’s Take on Bernard Madoff

http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1684_Bernard_Madoff_How_Are_the_Mighty_Fallen/

Fantastic article.

Great Perspective

This Guy has a great take on the recession – so true!  We are so privileged.

Boredom Makes Us Silly

I haven’t heard any hearty discussion occurring lately about how to better save the caribou, or whether terrorists deserve civil court rights, or what light bulbs we are allowed to have in our homes.

For many years now, America has enjoyed some really great years of economic growth.  But as a result, it has really made us bored.  People just need something to argue about and since we didn’t need to discuss real issues during such a long time of growth, we decided to fight against stupid crap that doesn’t matter.  Now, people realize that these arguments are so so small.

Problems with the recession (borderline depression) bring us back to earth to talk about things that are actually worth talking about.

I think the same exact thing has happened with Christianity in America.  We are so bored.  We have no real persecution or fear of the state.  We have tons of money and no need for charity.  We have great healthcare and no need for spiritual healing.

Which is why Christianity in America today is so silly.  We are so bored with ourselves that we write books like “Pagan Christianity”.  I feel like Barna wasted a good portion of his life to write this book.  How bored are we that we are now discussing the heritage of a sermon, or church services!?!?  What good does that do?

Why does that matter?!?  Points like this are so cynical in that they provide nothing but criticism of the way that God, in His sovereignty, has allowed to happen.  Has God made a mistake?  Clearly that is not possible.  

We are so bored that we will use our small time on earth to research all of the Christian traditions today that have roots in Paganism.  We are so bored.

I think that if God could supernaturally place all true believers in Africa, Asia, India, and South America to experience their suffering and their persecution for the Gospel, that American Christian would no longer pay attention to these moronic cynics.

We would no longer argue over whether emergent church is right or wrong.  Or whether we should even have a church service.  Or whether we should preach anymore.  Or whether Traditional vs. Contemporary worship is better. Or whether we have created a Christian “industry” of the Gospel.  Or whether we should have a basketball court in our church or not.  Or whether we should advertise or not.

We are so bored.

I hope that soon, Christians can stop arguing over temporary and insignificant things that will never change.

I hope that soon, we Christians will begin to truly seek Christ and His word.  That we would fast and pray and witness and suffer and love Jesus.

I have been arguing over these points just like everybody else.  I am too tired to discuss such trivial things anymore.  All these arguments have produced an extremely confused generation of Christians (myself included).

Maybe we should follow Paul, when he said that “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”

Simple enough right?

It has begun

 

David and I have begun laying the new floor.

Details soon to follow. . .this glue is messy.

Tim Keller – Redeemer Convocation

Tim Keller is going to be the speaker at Redeemer Theological Seminary’s Inaugural Convocation.

Redeemer Seminary just became its own independent seminary (used to be Westminster) and rumor has it that Keller is going to be on the board.

It’s going down on Monday, February 16 at 7:30pm at Park Cities Prebyterian Church.

Anyone want to join me?

Westminster Class With Dr. Sinclair Ferguson

Hello all - 

Just wanted to let all everyone know that Westminster Theological Seminary is opening up a class for anyone to audit for free!!!  Not only that, but it’s being taught by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, a Scottish theologian who now resides in South Carolina.  

The class is going to be covering the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms and Ferguson is a leading expert on the subject.

The class takes place on the first Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the month for the next 3 months.  It goes from 6-9pm on Thursday and Friday, and 9am-noon on Saturdays.

It starts tonight at PCPC in Dallas.

I Live On Cement, With Dust In My Pants

Long week.  It has been a long week.  

All is well with the Joneses aside from the fact that we live on Cement and I can’t make it through our house without getting dust in my pants.  

My friend David Yount (see my “Heroes” post) agreed to assist me and my moronic idea to put new floors in my house by myself.  

Carpet is nastier than guarding the fat guy on the skins team in basketball.  I don’t care how long your carpet has been down. . .it’s disgusting.  Ours was 13 years old and I immediately regretted my decision once we started pulling it up.

We pushed through the nastiness and finished pulling carpet and tack strip in one night.  A success!  Thanks to David a million fold for helping with this project.  That guy is a workhorse.  He has three talents, permanent poker face, sports knowledge, and house demolition.

Then we got to the engineered floors that were glued down.  I would rather step into the octagon with Jack Bauer than remove these glued down floors again.

We ended up needing a jackhammer and a metal floor buffer/scraper to get it up.

These are before pics.

During. . . .

And after. . . .

Our floor is supposed to arrive this Friday, and then it has to acclimate for 4 days in our house.  So we are gonna start laying this puppy down on Wednesday of next week.

God help us.

My First Blizzard!

So Michelle and I took the day off yesterday to recoup and get ready for a great day today.  The two days that I have snowboarded at Winter Park have been enjoyable but extremely tiring.  If you have ever been boarding, you know that flat terrain is a snowboarder’s misery.  And it seems like we found flat terrain more often than nice blue or blue-black runs.

So today, I switched to skis.  It’s been ten years since I have skied and I have only been skiing 3 day s in my life.  But all in all it was a good day.  I picked skiing back up relatively quickly but then out of nowhere, a blizzard hit the mountain.

At around 2pm the wind decided to pick up to about 30 mph with a wind chill of -20.  I mean it was seriously out of nowhere.  If you have seen the movie “The Mummy” it was like that sandstorm that came out of nowhere.  We were enjoying a nice blue run near the top of the Winter Park mountain when the wind and snow came with a fury.

It was actually scary.  I began trying to recall any “Man vs. Wild” episodes that I have seen where Bear Grylls has to weather snow and extremely cold conditions.  We couldn’t see 5 feet in front of us and we weren’t close to the bottom.  

It took us about 30 min in the blizzard to reach the bottom and then they sounded the emergency horn from base.  As it turns out, this was a legitimate blizzard.  

We are in the condo now, warm and safe, and the snow has cleared.  

Everything considered, it was a great experience.

We may ski again tomorrow.  I really enjoyed not having the strap in every time I got off of a ski lift.

Captain’s Log – Winter Park, CO: Day 3

Ouch.  

I have snowboarder’s hangover already.  Yesterday got off to a slow start.  We didn’t even sit on the first chair lift until about 10:30.  Then, the first 30 minutes of riding involved enormous amounts of catwalks, which are long distances of flatness.  For a snowboarder, this means clipping in and out a bunch of times which is actually more tiring that the act of snowboarding itself.  But once we found so good trails, it was amazing!

Seth’s version:  The first jump I did was about 6 foot with a 360 tail spin grab which was difficult for my first jump ever but I am Seth Jones.  And when I landed I realized there was a small child laying at the landing so I had to do my front flip 180 side grab to avoid hurting the little child.  Then I hit the halfpipe and was recruited for the X-Games (they said something about Shawn White being nothing next to me) but since I am dedicated to the ministry, I respectfully declined.  At the end of the day I finally landed my 720 double back flip to fakie.  Good day.

Michelle’s version:  Yes he did do some jumps.  The height probably maxed out at about 3 feet and he almost grabbed his board on one of them.  Good day.

So that was the day.  I am sore, really sore.  But I shall ride again today!

This is us at dinner 2 nights ago.

Today, it’s snowing like crazy on the hill and is still in the negative degrees.  

Should I consider the X-Games?

Jonesie