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Who Do You Say I Am? – Thoughts on the book Your Jesus is Too Safe

// August 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // Read Me

      I should start with the general disclaimer that I know Jared Wilson and have a great respect for him. Even before I read this book I knew that Jared had a conviction to convey to the world who Jesus Christ really is. I’ve read Jared’s blog for some time and was privileged to be apart of Element until God moved my wife and I to work with Cross Point Dickson.  It’s because of the deep respect I have for Jared and his visible love for Christ that I asked to be apart or his blog tour and review his new book, Your Jesus is too Safe.

      Your Jesus is too Safe is a reminder to Christians of what Christ himself asked his disciples in Matthew 16… Who do you say I am?  Jared calls out Christians on who we make often make Jesus out to be and drives home the Biblical truth about who Christ truly is.  As Jared put’s it:

Let’s be frank: if you find the message of Jesus easy to digest, you’d better check the label on the box. you may be consuming a diluted version of Christianity. (p.27, Jesus the Promise)

       Despite the serious nature of the book Jared throws some great humor even referencing Stong Bad and his footnotes go from serious Biblical references on one page to out of no where humor on another. In fact, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the footnotes just as much as the content. Though that’s probably not fair because it’s not often I enjoy getting slapped in the face by a friend who says You’re not doing it right! That’s not who Jesus really is!  Still with each turn of the page it was hard not to want to read the footnotes first! Some of my favorite footnotes:

…These false prophets are fortunate to live in the days of tolerance of blasphemers. As a prophet, they wouldn’t have profited in the olden days. p.42

I keep assuming that you’re someone who speaks aloud to books. If I were you, I wouldn’t do this if you’re seated next to someone in a waiting room or on an airplane. Unless you really want to freak people out and give them a good story to tell their friends. In that case, go ahead, weirdo.  p. 101

Okay, he was on  donkey, so we’ll call it “lukewarm pursuit.” p.126

Check out Matthew 13:11-16. How’s your mind? Blown? p.184

    There was very little about the book I did not like or agree with. And honestly it’s not because of Jared, his writing style or anything of that sort, but instead because of how I love reading about the person of Christ. Through everything I have made him over the years, I find it refreshing to re-remember who Jesus is and throw aside some of the things Christ is not. I would like to say the book made me feel good but at times it made me feel pretty worthless. Your Jesus is too Safe is definitely worth the read if only to re-examine who Jesus is. I leave you with my favorite passage from the book. It’s speaks volumes about Jared’s heart, the book and the person of Jesus Christ:

     My friends, Jesus is not a pop song, snuggly sweater, affectionate boyfriend, a poster on your wall, self-help book, motivational speech, warm cup of coffee, ultimate fighting champion, knight in shining armor, or Robin to your Batman. He is blood.

    And without blood, you die. (p.243 Jesus the Provision)

_____

you can pick up a copy of Your Jesus is too Safe at Amazon.

You can also ready more of Jared’s work at the following blogs: Gospel Driven Church and Thinklings

Finally, to read some other reviews of the book try the Your Jesus is Too Safe Blog Tour.

p.s. Jared, sorry I missed my date on the tour. I was on vacation without computer access (as any good vacation should be) and flubbed up the auto publish of this.

Garfield Birthday Strips

// July 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Who Knows

In honor of the one day a year I try to play recluse in my house, I have decided to share all of the Garfield comic strips that occurred on his birthday. They may now have always been the funniest but it’s nice to celebrate another year of not kicking the bucket. So without further adieu, Here’s Garfield:

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How Twilight Should Have Ended

// July 22nd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Cinema

Was I the only one in the world that felt that Twilight was just a really bad WB (CW?) movie? Terrible movie, I watched it and after wished I had that hour of my life back.
However, if the movie would have ended like this I might have actually watched it in the theater. Something like opening scene, queue Blade…then end. Great flick at that point.

Read Me – Your Jesus is too Safe

// July 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Read Me

I tend to read quite a few books at once. Some technical, some spiritual, some informative, and some jsut for the fun of the read. In an attempt to keep less tools in the fire I’m going to try adn finish one before the adding another. Seems a lofty goal but probably worth a try.

With that said, I’ve just started reading a book my by friend Jared C. Wilson called You Jesus is too Safe.  The tile alone intrigues me and I gotta tell you that I really like what I’m reading so far. I always enjoyed listening to Jared speak when my wife and I hung out with the Element community in Nashville. Very few people I meet now a days have such a passion to introduce people to Christ.

I’ll be doing a review of the book sometime in August and possibly even an interview with Jared.

You Are Doing It Wrong – Peeling a Banana

// July 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Doing It Wrong

Every now and then you experience a moment where you say to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that”… In this case it’s because I (among others) was outsmarted by a monkey. watch:

So now that you feel as dumb as I do think about this, what have you made complicated in your life that you could do much simpler? Past that, who can you learn from that you don’t expect to?

Facebook Vanity Names

// June 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Awesomeness, Marketing

Anyone else get a cool facebook vanity name?

I was hoping to get aaron but sadly it was already taken, so I decided to take a different route and instead got imawesome.   No real significant Marketing or SEO advantage like some other names I’ve seen people get, but mine is a whole lot cooler. Given I probably should have gotten aaronwesterman, just because I use it in a lot of other ways including twitter, but oh well.

The other thing that I have found to be pretty cool about the facebook names, much like gmail addresses if you wanted to know is that you get all variations of the name. For example, not only is imawesome mine, but im.awesome, i.m.awesome, i.m.aw.e.some or i.m.a.w.e.s.o.m.e. Confusing sure, nice….yes.

Either way, anyone else get a cool name?

I Write: Scrubs & How I Met Your Mother

// April 30th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // InterWeb

So as many of you know I devote quite a bit of time to the shows How I Met Your Mother and Scrubs.  I try to write reviews of the weekly episode and they get quite a few visits. I enjoy writing them and have tried to put a lot of thought into it. I break things down and even used to try and recap the whole show in addition but found that it was cutting into my nightly nap times so I cut back, for now at least.  I even started taking the music sections of each show review and putting them on devoted pages for Scrubs Music and How I Met Your Mother Music. Still in progress with the music pages but I’ve got at least all of the current seasons up.

I never knew that the review world was such a hard cookie to crack (by the way I’m really Jones’in for some Oreos and talk of cookies only makes it worse). I get quite a few unique visits to the reviews each week but I’m struggling to get discussion started. I’ve tried taking notes from some of my favorite review sites, asked them questions about generating discussion and implemented a lot of their advice. But Now I just have to wait and see if it works out. I get a quite a few comments from friends about the reviews, just more in person and not on the articles. Oh well.

So what is my point? I’m not too sure. I love doing what I do on the site, so I have no plans of stopping. Even with Scrubs “potentially” ending the series this year, I’ll probably go back to Season 1 and do reviews too. Anyways. I’ve been meaning to start talking more on this my personal site, so it was a good excuses to talk.

Cheers.

Join a Real Band

// April 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Freelancing

I enjoy punishing myself through fruitless side projects. One that I truly love and thought was going to be far more popular than it turned out was my Rock Band/Guitar Hero parody (real band) site joinarealband.com.

I made it because I am an actual drummer and the game kind of annoyed me at first… let me take that back, the people who loved the game annoyed me. The games are actually quite fun, despite the lag of where actual notes and beat should be played (I’m not alone). But I found it annoying how proud people were to be great at this game when with probably just a little work they could have been good at the real thing.

Despite it’s current un-popularity, it was pretty enjoyable to make.  Especially some of the little subtle comments and graphics. I wanted it to be humorous, but fairly PG rated, which if you know a lot about about the rock star lifestyle isn’t really that easy.  Either way, my parody hero Darren Barefoot inspired the idea with his ever so clever parodies iCryptex and Get a First Life. Now sure this isn’t the only parody of the game in town, possibly just the worst publicized one. Rock band jokes like college humor’s roadie hero,and the accordion hero game made me laugh endlessly in fact. Then my favorite web comic XKDC chimed in on the Rock Band situation and I knew for sure I wasn’t alone.

But honestly, what did I expect… once people start making t-shirts making fun of the situation it usually means the market is flooded.

Case in Point:

I heard something about an Awesomeness Motivational Poster?

// January 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Awesomeness

So glad you asked. If you have ever watched the TV show How I Met Your Mother you would probably know that Barney (a character on the show) had commissioned an “Awesomeness Poster” to be made. On the poster, the motivational phrase was “When I get sad, I just stop being sad and be awesome instead. True Story.”  I was sad, because this became my motto to live by but I could not find the poster anywhere. So I commissioned my own to be made. You can find it here. If you want even more information on this amazing poster check out this article on Barney’s Awesomeness Motivational Poster.