blessed

My wife had game night with the ladies tonight. So, I went to the Silver Chair, thinking I was going to be able to hit the books and study some. Fat chance. But it's ok. I was radically blessed. I got to sit and chat with some brothers for a while. The following is a non-exhaustive list of what our conversation included:

• how most modern music is dumb
  
• how music serves as one one of the greatest proofs for the existence of God [read more here]
  
• rabbinical and traditional Jewish interpretations of the OT and how unique they often are
  
• Paul's hermeneutic of creation
  
• how to diminish and augment chords
  
• how Jesus was known for drinking in Matthew 11 and why people are so afraid of that
  
• why old hymns are so dang good and pregnant with glorious truths
  
• men's and women's roles in the church and Deborah as a judge in the OT
• how cool it was to wear nasty hair and paint your finger-nails black and try to be punk rock when you were in college [this probably subconsciously made us think that we are really punk rock b/c we talked about the old days when we tried to be punk rock]
  
• how Mark Driscoll is often tact-less and right
  
• how the Gamecocks are the greatest
  
• about the false dichotomy between love and truth [1 Cor 13 says they're a happily married couple, ya know]
  
• about the stench that comes from theoretically upright, yet lifeless orthodoxy [and how we crave to be snapshots of love AND truth like Jesus was]
  
• about how youth ministers and worship leaders are not biblical/NT church offices
  
• and a bunch more

There are several great things about all that we discussed. First, cigars were present. It made it a bit sweeter. Second, the soft crispness of October's first Friday was light years past satisfying. Third, and most import, there was a near-tangible feeling of the Holy Spirit's presence when I got up to leave. He is there and He is not silent.

Listening to Him, learning from Him, and walking with Him are not easy, but indescribably fulfilling when they are experienced. He is faithful and good.