+ There are a lot of inconsequential football games being played by below par teams at this stage of the season.

+ Colts won ugly again, but they won.

+ Back in the world of more important matters, we had a good time at church this morning.

+ The truck worked this week, which was a welcome change of affairs from last Sunday. Unloading and loading up in the sleet didn’t seem to phase our guys – they’re a great team.

+ Everything was locked away early today – thanks Mario for pointing out that was probably because I wasn’t teaching.

+ Lesaya did a great job – see my post below.

+ The new sub-woofers really made a difference – even I could hear it.

+ Terrific response to our Christmas project to provide gifts for the homeless – our folks are the best.

+ Low attendance – generally is the Sunday after Thanksgiving – but it was a good morning.

+ Another huge ego bites the dust – Plexico will probably be charged with a felony.

+ Watched news footage of the re-opening of Leopold’s restaurant in Mumbai after a number of people had been killed there by terrorists last week. It was a bit freaky as I know the restaurant well.

+ My brother is 60 tomorrow – he’s 18 months older than me. Is 60 really that close for me? – impossible!

+ Very full week ahead. Looking forward to it.

Lesaya did a great job teaching this morning as we continued our series God Has A Name. I loved the way she brought so much positive and practical stuff out as she talked about Jehovah-Jireh – the Lord will provide.

Best of all to me, was the concept of partnering with Jehovah-Jireh. She talked about the necessity of continuing to give ourselves, even when things are tight – and that is right on for where life is at just now for so many people.

By the way, this isn’t just glorious theory for Lesaya, her husband Chris lost his job six weeks ago. They’re living what she was saying.

When times are tough the last thing we should be doing is developing a siege mentality, letting fear take over and cutting back on either our commitment to tithing or being generous to others.

In good times and bad, God has committed to bless us with the same measure that we bless others. So if we go down to measuring our giving with a teaspoon, then that’s what we’ll get ourselves.

But if we continue to live a lifestyle that honors God and demonstrates faith … if we make ourselves and our limited resources available to the Lord who provides, we can thrive in troubled times.

+ I enjoy spending time with friends – it was a good Thanksgiving.

+ What has been going on in India is distressing. I feel for my friends over there – the terrorist attacks will really have shaken them. My plans for this year were originially to be there right now and not two weeks ago. That would have been interesting!

+ Read a great book on the plane yesterday – Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson. Great motivating book – not for the faint at heart.

+ Maybe there’s no recession after all – seems like people were spending money like it’s going out of fashion on Black Friday.

+ Tomorrow’s service will be good for those who are struggling or anxious. We’re going to be looking at Jehovah-Jireh – The Lord Will Provide as we continue the series God Has A Name.

+ We got a ton of food for our pantry this week, which is great since Thanksgiving almost wiped us out. God always provides – which, come to think of it, is what we’re talking about tomorrow!

+ Great new airport in Indianapolis – really makes LaGuardia look tacky. But the one, big redeeming factor is, New York’s home.

+ Glad to know our truck is all fixed for tomorrow. Did I say our guys really rose to the occasion last Sunday?

+ Meeting with guys from Regal this coming week to talk over our multi-site plans.

+ I was on four flights this week and every one of them arrived early. Is that the first time in American history?

+ Doug was encouraging me to write a book about my weight loss journey. I’m thinking it over – I do enjoy writing.

I know I’m a relatively new American and Thanksgiving was not part of my tradition for much of my life, but the whole concept is outstanding, although it has been secularized and commercialized. Anyway, if you read what was in George Washington’s mind when he started this thing rolling, I hope you’ll never be tempted to call this Turkey Day again – it’s intended to be way, way more … 

 WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and assign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;– for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;– for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;– and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other tranfgressions;– to enable us all, whether in publick or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

 Over the past five years I have visited India on around eight different occasions, spending much of that time with Covenant Blessings Church in Thane, on the outskirts of Mumbai.

I know Mumbai reasonably well and am therefore watching the news reports of today’s terrorist attacks with a sense of disbelief and outrage.  I am familiar with the Taj hotel, which seems to be at the center of all that is happening. While I could never afford to stay there, I have gone in for coffee on several occasions and have walked around the magnificent building admiring its sensational architecture. Gill and I were there early last year.

I’ve also eaten at Leopolds restaurant a number of times, scene of another of the terror attacks. It’s generally full of tourists. Gill and I ate lunch there in February of ‘07.

India is a wonderful country and the Indian people are amongst the warmest I have ever met. I feel for them and for their country as they too have increasingly become the victims of terrorist activity.

I’m praying for them and hope you are too.

Here’s an interesting commentary on where things in our country might realistically be headed – written by a Scot 200 years ago. It’s on my friend Douglas McIntyre’s blog – Fascinating reading …

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.”"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”

“From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result thatevery democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, whichis always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years”

“During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage”having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

Here is the bottom line: the author of these words is hotly disputed and there has been no way to successfully verify that Tyler is the author. However, regardless of this, it is still an intersting commentary on where the US is heading. Feel very confident that this is the road that our President elect is leading us down. Remember when we get there, the majority voted for this.

By the way, USSA is United Socialist States of America

This is only our eighteenth Thanksgiving, so I’m still a bit of a novice at this. We don’t have a million relatives scattered all over Long Island, so we have no brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins and a crazy Uncle Sal to cram into a house that was never intended to hold that many people and where it’s impossible to find a quiet spot to watch the Cowboys’ game.

We’ve spent pour seventeen Thanksgivings to date in a number of different situations. We’ve hosted friends a couple of times, but gave that up after the year I spilled oil from the oven roast potatoes into the bottom of the oven creating a thick cloud of smoke all around the kitchen and setting off the smoke alarms. We ate dinner quickly with the windows wide open, which is hardly advisable at the end of November.

Some of my favorite memories are the times we bussed a load of homeless people out from Manhattan and provided them with a good dinner, a shower, a change of clothes and the return journey with enough food to keep them going through the weekend.

For the past several years we’ve opted for a quiet couple of days in Florida with friends who have retired down there. Thanksgiving Day in the sunshine state has been a case of watching the parade, going out to a country club to eat and then returning home for football. Very restful.

This year we’ve come over to Indianapolis for a couple of days – frequent flyer miles come in handy! – and we’re going to spend some time with friends we’ve known for almost 25 years, Douglas and Fiona McIntyre. I first met Doug back in ‘84 when we were both pastoring in Scotland (he’s a real Scot, I’m a wannabe) and we came together to spearhead arrangements for German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke to come and have some services in Aberdeen. We had a great time with Bonnke and Doug and I have been friends ever since.

How they came to be in Indianapolis is a convaluted story, one of those things that only God could have engineered, but here they are in a freezing cold city, which has the one redeeming grace (probably more than one, but I haven’t discovered it yet) of having a great football team. Doug also has the benefit of access to his company’s suite for Colts games – pity they’re not playing on Thanksgiving Day.

So this year will be different again – but here’s the thing that I really like.

I get to see really good friends who I don’t see anywhere near as often as I’d like to.

So that’s still one more thing for which I am truly thankful.

+ Man, it was cold today 23 this morning and a high of 34. That’s insane for this time of year.

+ Great morning with the church – see below.

+ I know I have a sick sense of humor, but isn’t there a slight irony in me teaching on Jehovah Rophe – the Lord who heals – and the morning ending with one of our guys being taken away on an ambulance? Tom’s doing fine, by the way!

+ The Jets nailed the Titans – well, well!

+ Looking forward to a couple of days in Indianapolis over Thanksgiving with Douglas and Fiona McIntyre – good friends, good food and good football – apart from the Lions of course!

+ Met a number of new folks today – it’s too long since we had a newcomers get-together.

+Pumped up the volume of the band – it was good.

+ It’s cold.

+ Everyone’s still wired about our Thanksgiving outreaches. Yesterday capped it off as we served dinners to homeless guys on the street in freezing conditions.

+ I guess we had a decent crowd today – or simply a hungry one – the cafe was cleaned out by the time service started.

+ Updated my iPod for the upcoming trip and picked a couple of books from my “books to read” pile.

+ We’ve decided to let common sense rule and are focusing our Christmas efforts on Sunday 21st rather than do a Christmas Eve service. So many key people were finding Christmas Eve difficult or impossible that we decided to relieve everyone concerned of the pressure.

+ This has been a very good day.

+ I should probably sleep, but I’m livid that a friend of mine who has been doing church in a movie theater is about to move into a brand new convention center that he will rent each week for peanuts. Hate the guy!

I worked out a long time ago that doing portable church is living on the edge – there are so many variables that every Sunday is an adventure in one way or another. However this morning started with more adventure than I was really planning on as I drove over to our movie theater with the sun hardly up and the thermometer hardly daring to budge above 23 degrees.

A phone call from the leader of our set-up team informed me that our 26′ former U-Haul truck that houses a lot of our equipment was doggedly refusing to start and he was off to investigate.

Once I got to the theater we pulled all the rest of our gear from the small storage area the management allows us to use – and waited. Thirty minutes later a convoy of pick-up trucks and cars arrived carrying the entire contents of our dead truck.

Our back-up team of drivers, whom we had never needed to call out before, answered the call very early on a bitterly cold morning by heading down to Medford and loading up all we needed to make church happen.

We are totally indebted to these guys who not only rose to the occasion, but excelled. Initially my best hope was to do the service with minimal set-up, but we ended up with everything absolutely as usual.

Over the years I’ve spent quite a bit of time in churches where outside of a select few people, it was impossible to get anyone to do anything. So I’m still blown away when I see the level of dedication I witnessed this morning.

Great people!

My friend Noe put some of our teaching videos on Google earlier this year and the viewing stats are pretty interesting. From the eight he put up, the two with the most hits are from our Desperate Sex Lives series.

The Best Sex Ever has been viewed 1098 times -

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1401936415610011295

But the message that’s off the charts is PORN – What’s The Big Deal, with 2410 hits -

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5806904008485374702

Interesting stats! Guess we scratched an itch!