I remember back in the 1980’s I have seen Carman in concert several times.  I always liked the way he would tell a story in a way that would get people excited.  I have heard many people preach to me that his type of preaching does not produce a lasting conversion.  I believe you could say that about any teaching.  In any population, you are always going to have a select group that will be more committed to a cause than others.  I will say that after more than 20 years, I remember his concerts vividly.  Yes they did make an impact.  It is amazing how I have changed since then.  There was a time that I would spend hours in the Bible day and night.  These were some good times and although I do not spend the time that I use to do, I am still every bit as convinced that God loves us and sent Jesus so that we would be able to be with him.  Although I have failed him hundreds of times, I know he has never given up on me.  I continue to be blessed to this day.

It looks like the Oklahoma State Cowboys performed very well against the Missouri Tigers.  It is good to see them succeed even though my team has been struggling.  Yes I do think you can root for both teams as long as you are not playing each other.  It is good to see our state do well when possible.

We should be getting our Internet switched over to Cox Communications this week so hopefully this will help some of the drop outs we have been having.  Again, I am not blaming AT&T for our problems but rather the old infrastructure in our neighborhood.  With the new Cox lines behind our house, and the new line to our house, I am hopeful this will help to give us a more dependable Internet experience.

A couple of weekends ago I started painting a window on the outside just to have it start raining five minutes after finishing.  The rain washed the paint down onto the brick and so I had to wait a while to finish the job.  Now that I am finished with the job, I have some masking tape that does not want to come off the window.  A razor blade gets most of it but it seems to be leaving a sticky residue on the window.  If anyone knows how to get that off, I would love the input.  The sun came out this weekend for the first time in nearly a month.  As much as everyone else wanted the sun to come back out, I actually enjoyed the cool, overcast, foggy, misty days.  It has been nice and fresh seeing the cool days where we can get some rain.  It seems like the last ten years has been so dry that I love to see rain any time we can get it.

At work it has been wild, busy, and just plain anarchy .  Since I work in a program office that has hundreds of airplanes world wide, you can count on having some sort of crisis non-stop.  There are times that I go in at 6:30 AM just to find there is a crisis already going on.  With the never ending presentations, updates, and rule changes, it is hard enough to keep up.  Now we have an operational readiness inspection (ORI) coming on November 1st.  If any of you have ever been through one of those, you know how chaotic it can be.  The preparation leading up to the even usually is worse than the event itself.  The one rule to always keep in mind in these inspections is to never offer information that is not specifically requested.  I have found that when you do this, you tend to open the door for more questioning that could potentially get you in trouble.  On top of all this, I have two trainees that I am responsible for and I hardly have time for them.  I feel sorry for them because every time I start to show them something, I get pulled off onto some other crisis that requires my immediate attention.  I am trying my best to get them up to speed because that will make my life much easier.

What ever happened to my photography?  I am asking myself that question because I never have time to go out much these days.  I love to take pictures and this is the perfect time with the leaves changing.  Autumn and Spring are the times of year that we get to see God’s beauty.  It is just amazing how pretty the trees can be when the leaves begin to change.  Just the same, in the Spring, the world breathes a new breath of life.  It is just amazing when you can stop and take in all that God has done.

Back to the family…  My wife and I are doing very well.  My wife got another job at the same place that turned out to be a promotion.  She is doing very well with her health.  Both of my sons are back home and life is going pretty well with everyone getting along.  My sister’s situation seems to be improving by the day.  My dad is also very happy.  When everything is going smooth at home, it helps to make it easier to see the wonders of the world when you drive around and see the leaves changing.  I can honestly say that we are blessed.   Like I said before, I am living the American dream and I am done setting career goals.  I have reached a point in my career that I am very happy with and my college goals have been met. 

It is time to start living before life is over.  One day I started to think and realize that ever since I got married, I have been building toward making a life for my family.  Then I realized that my kids are almost grown and life is passing us by while I am working toward a life.  Life is happening and I need to stop and enjoy it.  It is too easy to get caught up in working to make a life for your family and later you find out that your kids will not even talk to you.  If you are one of those, you may want to think about it and start living now because the clock does not stop whether you have your career or not.  I would encourage you to stop and look at what you have.  Give God the credit and be thankful for them.  Realize that your attitude can determine happiness.  You can look at what you have and decide to be happy now.  I know I have been guilty of this one myself.  I have told myself that when I get ______ done, I will be happy.  When the goal is accomplished, there will be something else.  Stop, be happy now.  This concludes my sermon for today.  Please turn to page___ in your hymnals.   Just kidding.

Sometimes I get too busy to get to this blog but I always try to make time to at least give an update from time to time.  Thanks for stopping by.

I have always liked University of Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford but after watching this video, I have an even greater respect for him.

In this day where the majority of our culture falls into this category of not having a formal belief system, the mass media shapes the values of the people.  The media is a financially driven system where they are driven by ratings that equate to advertising dollars.  We can all attest to the desire to go outside when there is a siren nearby.  We are drawn out to see what it is about.  The same holds true when people drive on the freeway and there is an accident.  Even though the accident may only be on one side, both sides of the freeway are backed up because everyone drives slow to see what is going on.  These are often referred to as “rubber neckers”.

This human nature of being attracted to a controversy is exploited in the media making their reporting suspect and lacking objectivity.  If society’s value system is shaped by this non objective medium, then reality is skewed.  If the people’s values are not based on a non moveable system of beliefs then people can be convinced to believe anything.  The world cultures are swayed by the one with the loudest voice and with no standard of truth then people are constantly changing values.  The dangerous part of all this is that our culture is being shaped by television, and radio that is only driven by ratings.  Remember before that to get those ratings the media exploits this natural attraction to controversy.  They report on any type of story as though it is a controversy and always take the angle that someone is a victim.

This reporting centers on the unjust behavior of passing judgment on others in the form of hatred.  This so called hatred becomes hate speech and this become violence or a denial of someone’s freedoms.  So the theme of the reporting is that the only real truth is that it is wrong to judge anything because in doing so, it is hatred.  I am not talking about judging people but rather judging anything, behaviors, or whatever a person could conceive.  Over time, this reporting has worked because no one has a belief system that is based on a unchanging truth.  Once people have accepted that truth is relative except the one truth that judgment is wrong, then it is easy to convince people of the dangers of religion.  They go the extra mile and single out one religion and that is Christianity.  They portray Christianity as a tool of hate because it has immovable standards that cannot be twisted by the media.

In the world view where nothing is wrong except the passing of judgment, then there is no room for Christianity.  This portrayal of Christianity is completely misrepresented but that is not relevant in their eyes.  The end game is to eliminate anything that could be used to stifle unbridled chaos.  If the Bible is true, then one must face the reality that a person’s actions DO have consequences.  If the Bible is true then a person is responsible for the choices they make.  This reality of a person being responsible for their actions is just too much for our society to take.  We live in a society that does not want to take responsibility for their actions.  I am old enough to see the changes over the years and see how society has changed.

Unfortunately for this generation, truth is still truth whether the people choose to acknowledge it or not.  People often read stories like this and become hostile because their own conscience convicts them.  They know what they are doing is wrong deep inside yet they convince themselves that if enough people believe it, then it is okay.  They see stories like this and become anxious and mad at the person telling the story because they see it as passing judgment.  Remember, in this culture, the only absolute wrong thing to do is to pass judgment.  They often misquote the verse, Matthew 7:1 that says “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”  They have shaped this verse to mean we are not allowed to judge anything or anyone.  They take it out of context because they want to use the Bible as against those that would quote it.  This verse is making a point that a person reaps what they sow.  Basically if you judge you will be judged. If you forgive, you will be forgiven. You can see my point.  This verse does not mean you cannot discern right and wrong.

People become hostile toward those that would claim Christianity and claim that the Bible passes judgment and if you believe it then you are passing judgment.  They are completely wrong in this assessment.  The Bible gives guidance how we are to live and is truth.  We that have the world view that believe the Bible, we are not passing judgment but rather understand that we are incapable of living flawless according to the Bible.  We understand that if we were able to do this, then there would be no reason for Jesus to die for our sins.  I am as big of sinner as your average run of the mil axe murderer but I also understand that by grace, I am forgiven by my faith in Jesus’ death on the cross.  I do think we have an obligation to live as the Bible tells us to but when we fail, we have an advocate that pleas on our behalf (1 John 2:1).  As believers we get up when we fail and continue on.  We do not beat ourselves up and see ourselves as unworthy.  By ourselves we are unworthy but through Christ’s payment, we are worthy. 

This story is not an attempt to pass judgment on anyone but rather to point out human nature because we are fallen by nature.  God does forgive us but we have to repent, or have a meaningful change from our ways.  Those of us that follow the Bible are failures by any measures.  We get up when we fail and accept Jesus’ payment and go on.  Every person in the Bible with the exception of Jesus were terrible sinners.  David was a murdering cheat but God said he was a man after HIS own heart.

It seems to me that our problems in the world are not who the politician is but rather the world view of the people that are electing them.  That includes myself in this assessment.  Maybe we can focus our energy on doing God’s will and not on blaming the media, politicians, or any other groups.  This early Saturday morning where my wife had to work left me thinking about the world and the condition of it.  I just wanted to express my opinions on the issue.

DISCLAIMER: I believe that common sense can be applied to just about anything including being responsible with the resources we have.  I believe it is wrong to willfully waste resources just for the sake of wasting.  I also believe that we are powerless as humans when it comes to changing the climate even if we wanted to.  I believe there is a political movement that has disguised environmentalism as an attempt to gain power.  The most militant of them are bent on destroying capitalism and are completely ‘off their rocker’.  If you watch these people intently you will see an agenda emerge.  There agenda is socialism if not outright communism.  Socialism as defined is when government controls financial and business matters in an attempt to more fairly distribute wealth.  Fairness is a subjective thing where the person defining fairness is usually the person that wants to take your rights away.

I believe the whole climate change movement is manufactured and has zero credibility to it.  I do believe the climate adjusts itself constantly through natural processes and humans are completely irrelevant.

I have no problem with paperless billing except when these companies force it upon you by charging you extra for a bill.  They forget that not everyone has a computer, much less the Internet.  Their motivation seems pure enough though I disagree with their premise.  Let us assume their environmental, climate change argument was valid.  Their ‘saving the planet’ by not killing trees is offset by the extra energy being wasted by running your computer.  Secondly they have to know that 90%+ of people that go online to see their statement will print them out on their own paper so they will have an archived record.  The government does this as well. 

For example: At my work they have taken all of the technical manuals and turned them into electronic documents where all the employees can get to them through their computers.  All the while they give out awards to the person that came up with the idea because it will save the environment and will prevent the unnecessary killing of trees.  Meanwhile another organization called ‘Quality’ is in action making rules that tell maintenance personnel that a manual is only current if it is in electronic form.  A person can print the necessary pages so they can do their work but that print out is only good for that day.  Each time you print out a technical manual, it prints the date that it was printed on each page.  If the maintenance personnel are caught using this material the next day, they are subject to disciplinary action.  These print outs are required to be destroyed each day.  If you have ten employees in your shop, then all ten of them have to print out the same material each day.  This results in an exponential growth in the destruction of trees.  These regulations are mandatory and must be complied with.

This is an example of what happens when the government gets involved in anything.  They have good intentions but the end result is that things are made worse.  I can remember about ten years ago when the government started advertising how they were going to try to go paperless.  The paperless government has turned their paperless effort into a massive growth in paper printing.

Almost every organization these days are trying to do their part in saving the environment.  They advertise on television showing the Earth in an almost worshipping way.  It sort of gives me the creeps because I see things happening that the Bible forecasted long ago.  The Bible talks about these days in great detail in Romans chapter one.

Romans 1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

I think it is always important to read the Bible in context.  Although I only posted the one verse, I do encourage you to read the entire chapter so that you will get the proper context of that verse. I do not think it is a good idea to read just one verse because it can be manipulated and taken out of context.

The main point of all this is that I am hearing this environmentalism taken in a way as to almost worshipping the Earth (creature) more than worshipping God.  This is ironic that most of these environmentalists that I come in contact with do not believe in God but do believe in the evolution of Charles Darwin.  It almost seems as though these two theories are contradictory to each other.  If you believe that the world as we know it came into being through natural selection of the fittest then who cares about the environment?  I mean if we are ever evolving then there is nothing we can do about it.  Only the fittest species will survive and natural selection will do the work for us.  The evil humans will destroy themselves and the omnipotent Earth will return to its glory.  If you sit back and think you can see how foolish this really is.  It takes way more faith to believe that everything we know came from an accident than from God.

I am a firm believer that people want to believe Darwin because to think otherwise would mean they are responsible for their actions.  If God is then we have a responsibility to live a certain way.  If God isn’t then we can live free to do whatever we want.  As difficult as it is to believe that everything we know came from natural selection, these people want to believe it because it is an excuse for riotous living.

Yes, I have veered off the subject of paperless billing but that is because to make the argument that environmentalism as it has become is to deny common sense.  To argue that the world is so delicate that we could destroy it or even change the climate is to argue against natural selection.  If natural selection is for real then there is nothing that environmentalists can do about it because we are so inferior that we will eventually destroy the world.  We will make the world uninhabitable and natural selection will have prevailed and humanity will no longer exist.  Why fight it?  If natural selection wins out in the end then just eat, drink, and be merry! 

The truth is that God is real and he is in charge.  We are responsible for our actions whether people want to admit it or not.  The paperless billing may help people believe they are helping things but in the end it is nothing more than an empty hope.  The power is not in the planet but in Jesus.  There is power in HIS name and I know as I typed that, many people tuned out just as it gave me chills.  I am very confident in this and I hope that you will be too.  I know this may sound like a rant but it is not meant to be.  I just want to shine a light on all the hysteria we hear today about saving the planet and going green.  If you were to listen to the news you would be stressed out all the time.  Why not give God another chance and stop judging him based on the failures of his followers.  He is good and will forgive. If we could ever be perfect, then there would be no reason for Jesus to have died for us.  Spend some time in the Bible and ignore the stories you hear about individuals that have failed God.  The people are always going to fail and always come across as hypocrites.  Give him another chance independently of people and  you will see there is something real to him after all.  Now open your hymnals to page 256 and join me in a song .

I spent the last couple of hours of my sleep time dreaming of the beginning of my Air Force career back at Davis-Monthan AFB.  I have been thinking about it in the current form since I just went to Tucson about a month ago.  Anyway, there are so many things going on that my mind is just racing.  I have been doing everything except giving it over to God.  Recently we have been so busy that we have virtually stopped reading the Bible and not thanking him for all that he has done.  I would just like to take a moment and tell the world what a great family I have and give God the credit that he deserves.  Sometimes we get so busy that we forget to acknowledge those that have helped us get where we are today.

My wife Sunday has been instrumental in helping me go through the Air Force, finish college, and raise two sons.  She has traveled the world with me and never complained.  What a great woman she is and I am so grateful to have her.  My oldest son has decided to get a place of his own and that really was hard for me to take at first but at the same time I am very proud of him.  My youngest son is still home in theory but he is growing so fast that he is hardly home either.  I do not blame him because I was the same way when I was his age.

I am thankful that I still have my dad around.  He has been a great friend to me and has done wonders for me.  I really do miss my mom though.  I lost her in 2005 to a heart attack and it seems that I have never had the chance to mourn her loss.  I miss you mom!  Well now that I have rambled on, the alarm is just about to come on.  It is really tough to sleep when you are thinking about 100 things.  I am grateful that I have so many things to think about.   I better get off here and get ready for work.  I have almost forgiven Gmail .  Yesterday I was having problems with it and you can read about it here.  I will try to post more often on here in the future.

After a long couple years, the graduation is over.  Today I graduated the University of Oklahoma putting a lot of stressful times away.  This is tough enough when you are 18 years old but when you are 43 and have a full family life and a full time job, it makes it even more of a challenge.  This day was supposed to be a huge moment and it was to a degree.  I feel like the whole event was under the influence of drugs.  I have not slept for more than three continuous hours in a week and the doctor gave me some itching medication for my poison ivy that really made me sleepy.

It was a good day though and I have a wonderful family that was there for me.  My beautiful wife Sunday shown in this photo has made so many sacrifices for me in our 20 years of marriage.  She sacrificed so much for me in getting this accomplishment done that I really do appreciate her.  She is testament to the Proverbs 31 woman spoken of in the Bible.  She is so incredible that words cannot express.

Now that I have this behind me, I can get back to life again.  The time involved in completing this goal has been amazing.  Our whole lives have been adjusted to make time for this.  God has been very good to us but has taken an unfortunate back seat to this goal.  It is time to put HIM first again and remember where my blessings come from.

Since my vacation time has reached the use or lose point, I took off today on this first day of Spring.  The world is a better place today or at least I can pretend.  I sure wish my advisor would write me back and tell me that my paper is great as is and that no other work is needed.  I know… I can dream on this first day of Spring.  As I am watching television posting this message, Little House on the Prairie is coming on.  Now this is not a program that I would typically watch but it does have a strange nostalgia attached to it.  I remember going to visit my grandparents in New Mexico as a kid and my tough Grandpa Taylor would be watching this show.  It was so ironic that he would be watching this because I saw him as such a tough, strong guy.  He died in 1980 and I still miss him today.

Also my mom was always into Westerns and so seeing one reminds me of her.  My mom’s favorite place in the world was Tucson, Arizona.  She would love to go see “Old Tucson Studios” where many cowboy shows were made including several from John Wayne.  Since we always went there as a child, that was my first choice in bases when I joined the Air Force.  I filled out my “dream sheet” and selected Davis-Monthan AFB as my first choice and they gave it to me.  That was where my wife and I had our first home and where my oldest son was born.  The only negative thing about living in Arizona was that it was way too hot in the summer time.  I distinctively remember the absence of this euphoric Spring time feeling when I was there.  Spring was not distinctive because it never got cold.  Spring was almost a downer because it was a reminder of the 150+ days over 100 degrees that was coming.  When I was there, it was fall that I really loved because I knew cooler days were on the way.

Despite the heat, I have great memories of the desert Southwest from living there as well as childhood memories.  I still have many family members that live in Southern New Mexico in Deming, and Las Cruces.  It is rare that we have Springtime, a day off, and nothing pressing to do.  I may just go out and take some Springtime pictures today.  But first my wife and I are going to go to the International House of Pancakes (IHOP) for breakfast in Bricktown OKC.  We are going to spend time together and be thankful to God for making this such a wonderful day and blessing us so much.  My son is back home and life is great.  It would not do God justice to fail to give him credit for the blessings that we have been fortunate to enjoy.

As I post this, my television is being covered by the rumbling sound of jet engines from nearby Tinker AFB.  Even on my day off I can hear my work.  The Air Force has been part of my life for more than 20 years.  Actually if you count the time my dad worked at Tinker AFB as a child, I have been around the Air Force my entire life.  Our home is just about a mile and a half off the end of their northwest runway so we often have airplanes flying over our house that are so loud that we cannot even hear the television.  To many people that would be something to complain about.  To us it is just another blessing to see how God has blessed us with a stable job that we can live a decent life.  The Air Force has been and will continue to be a part of our lives.

The current attitude of American supremacy in my opinion has gone too far.  It really troubles me every time I hear someone on television or radio refers to our country as a “super power”.  To me this statement just sounds arrogant to hear.  I am not saying that I think it is wrong to denounce Communism as being wrong.  In this case pointing out a murderous government that denies their people freedom is not boasting that you are the best around.  In that case Ronald Reagan needed to address this because the Soviet Union was growing and conquering nations on a regular basis.  I am very proud of many aspects of our country though we do have some things that are not to be proud of.  Among them are the ways we have treated various racial groups in our own country.  I do not think there is anything wrong with being proud of our country though I do think you can go too far.  Just as it is inappropriate to scream obscenities at a sporting event it is just as inappropriate to announce to the world that we are the “only super power”.  I am both a fiscal and social conservative and it bothers me every time I hear Rush Limbaugh exclaim this to the world.  Sadly this guest on NPR was not completely wrong in this regard.  The Republican Party that I have always clung to has become associated with this in recent days.  Unfortunately the Democrat “ic” party is far worse in many other ways in my eyes.  On many moral issues I cannot support the Democrats.  It seems as though everything that I find that is wrong with the world is supported by that party.  As bad as the Republican party has become, the alternative is even worse.

It would seem that everyone would instinctively know that public boasting is poor taste.  This is just another example of a bigger problem that we have in this world and that is a lack of understanding of what is right and wrong.  People base right and wrong on what the crowd thinks.  If the crowd feels that something is right then most people will follow along.  You may have heard this referred to as moral relativism.  This is what happens when you take religion out of public life.  The lack of having a fundamental standard in which to base morality has left an entire generation with no sense of right and wrong.  Public boasting is wrong period.  It is not acceptable in any circumstance.  Not because it is some sort of political correctness but because God’s word  (Bible) says so.