McCain 840, Thompson 167

Christianconservative (that’s christianconservative.wordpress.com not blogspot.com) reports on legislation written by former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson during his term in the Senate.
Looks like Thompson wasn’t too busy when it comes to headlining a bill or writing amendments and the like – or maybe his ideas just weren’t that popular.

A scouring of he legislative website of the Library of Congress, from 1995 to 2002, when Mr. Thompson was in the Senate, yields a total of five bills that became law for which he was the head sponsor. A sixth passed the Senate and was replaced by an identical House bill that was eventually signed by the president.
The bills include the naming of a post office and courthouse in Cookeville, Tenn., a private bill that granted permanent residency status to a young Bolivian girl getting treatment for cancer and her family and several other minor pieces of legislation. A quick comparison with Senator John McCain, his rival for the Republican presidential nomination, for the same period turns up 17 bills that became law for which Mr. McCain was the lead sponsor.

If you look at all the bills, amendments or resolutions each sponsored the score is McCain 840, Thompson 167.

Billy Graham in fair condition

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Billy Graham remains hospitalized with internal bleeding.
According to the AP:

Evangelist Billy Graham remained in fair condition Tuesday, a day after experiencing a second episode of intestinal bleeding at a hospital near his home in the mountains of western North Carolina, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Graham, 88, had “an uneventful, good night” after the Monday morning episode, and his condition was unchanged Tuesday morning, said Merrell Gregory, a spokeswoman for Mission Health & Hospitals in Asheville.

Read the full story here or get the latest from Google News

Friends of God coming to DVD


The HBO documentary by Alexandra Pelosi, which came out earlier this year and featured Ted Haggard (before his scandal), Jerry Falwell (who died earlier this year) and the Christian Wrestling Federation (who are preparing to take their ministry to Nigeria in a few weeks), will be coming out on DVD in October.
Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi DVD is available for pre-purchase from HBO.com for $25 or $22 from Amazon.com
From HBO:

In Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi, intrepid roving reporter/tour guide Pelosi takes viewers on an entertaining road trip into the red-state heartland of America, chronicling the leaders and followers who comprise the booming evangelical Christian movement.
Traveling to the states that helped elect and re-elect George Bush, Pelosi meets up with a dizzying array of outspoken and upbeat evangelicals: from TV celebrities like Joel Osteen, Jerry Falwell, and Ted Haggard, to the leaders of groups like the Christian Wrestling Federation and Cruisers for Christ (a car club), to regular folk committed to carrying out the Creationist messages plastered on billboards throughout the Bible Belt.

Thanks to the DMN for the heads-up

10 Commandments on film… again

The 10 Commandments are coming to the film… again.
With the original movie and the Prince of Egypt, I’m not sure why the story needs to be told on the silver screen again but it may be worth checking out. Christian Slater does the voice of Moses in this animated retelling of the Exodus story. The animation looks more like a computer game than most other animated movies coming out today…

God’s plan for you life

My good buddy Rick Reynolds from my Lighthouse 21 days (“This is Jerry Jones“) has packed up and moved to Reno to “get away from the buckle of the Bible belt.” Those may not be his exact words but he’s moved to Reno to focus more on ministering to the lost and is doing counseling now at a drug and rehab center.
He’s shared a message he gave last week on “God’s plan for your life.”
It’s about 30 minutes or so in length so I haven’t had a chance to watch the whole thing – but what I have watched has been good.
Check it out….
It’s interesting that he focused on that. I see myself spending more and more time thinking and praying about that over the last couple years, and now months and weeks.
I can’t wait till I hear, see and/or feel what God has really called me to.
In the mean time I’m just trying to be patient and follow Him whenever and wherever He places me.
In that line of thought, here are some great thoughts on our Holy Discontent (or Passion Groove as we call it at encounter) from Bill Hybels’ book of the same name:

  • “What is it that motivates people to work where they work, volunteer their time to the groups they serve, and donate money to the causes they support? Simply put, why do people do what they do?”
  • “‘That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more!’ – Popeye… What happens when we reach the point where we can’t ‘stands no more?’… What is is that you ‘can’t stands no more?'”
  • “The trouble with contentedness is that, when lived out in isolation, it can be lethal! If you’re not careful, you will become lulled into a state of satisfaction, safety and serenity, and you’ll altogether neglect needs in the world that should elicit deep discontent when you see them going unmet.”
  • “‘I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘is-ness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘ought-ness’ that forever confronts him.” (- Martin Luther King, Jr) Friends, this is what it looks like to live from a place of holy discontent – where ought-ness simply overtakes is-ness.”
  • On MLK: “The holy discontent that had taken up residence inside him simply wouldn’t allow him to give anything less than his entire life.”
  • “Have you ever wondered why, when you turn your life over to God, you don’t get express-freighted right to heaven? Or, to put it a little more crassly, if you’re so heaven-bound, then why are you still sucking air down here?” — I love that question. It really makes you question why we’re here. What is it that God has placed us here for.
  • Eph. 2:10 says that “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
  • “If you’re alive and kicking today, then there is a specific work that you are expected to do. There is a set of tasks with your name on it that God has given you to accomplish.”
  • “The goal is to cultivate your soul’s soil so that this doing-of-good-works process can unfold in your life.”
  • “None of your tears or anguish will be wasted; I (God) plan to use every ounce of what you’ve been through for good in this specific area.” — can I make that first part any bigger. Go back and read that one again. Think on it. Trust in it. Believe in it. That’s one of God’s greatest promises to me and one that I hold to day in an day out.
  • How will you know when your one thing shows up? “It will be the pesky preoccupation that vies for your undivided attention during the day and keeps you wide-eyed at night as is captures your heart and ignites your imagination. It will be the thing to force you to the floor, heaving sorrowful tears the whole way down. It will be the thing kicking and screaming inside of you, squawking for all it’s worth to be addressed.”
  • “My applecart got completely overturned by the thought of seekers going to hell simply because Christians refused to break out of their holy huddles long enough to embrace them… Seekers matter! And people far from God deserve better local church options that the ones available to them today!”
  • “When you find your holy discontent, feed it!” — don’t run from it. Move toward it. If poverty is your holy discontent, don’t move to the suburbs to avoid it – move to the inner city where you can see everyday and night how it affects people until your blood simply boils over.
  • “The pastor described how gut-wrenching an experience it had been to be told blatantly who mattered and who didn’t at church … and then to realize that his family was part of the ‘who didn’t’ category… racism in churches is not acceptable.”

Well that’s all I have for now – hey, I’m only halfway through the book. I just started it on Saturday night. 🙂
What is your holy discontent? What is the injustice or problem you see around you that makes your blood boil, makes your hair stand on ends and makes you say, “That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more!”? What are you doing about it?