A door or a fence...

I realized today that for some people in my life, I have been a door and for some I have been a fence.

My desire would be that my influence, friendship, parenting, spiritual leadership would open up people to the kingdom of God and most importantly the King of the kingdom. But for some people they could not see that door but were only retrained by me. My life was a fence and not a door. I kept them from something instead of becoming a doorway to something. The mystery of all that is that the person often determines what I am by who they are. For some I become a door that leads to life and for others I am merely a fence that they see as a barrier to something they think they need. When I am out of the picture...so is the fence....and the dog runs wild.

Sometimes we pray to be a door but are only a fence and at other times we think we are a fence and in reality we are a door...it often depends on what path the traveller is on and at what given point of their journey they are on.

Bob Dylan video: When the deal goes down

This Bob Dylan video from his new cd is really good. It's rich in texture like an old home movie your grandparents would have made, it evokes memories, places and people. It will hit an older generation more because of the images used but I still wept. Plus Scarlett is a modern Marilyn Monroe which doesn't hurt the video either...great style, the director is a master at evoking emotion through capturing a moment we all have been within. Plus Dylan always gets me for some reason...by the way...15 minutes till I buy my concert tickets...the iTunes pre-public sale goes on at 10am, Yippeee!

Scarlett & Dylan video

Our first wedding in the community....

I had the privilege of performing the wedding of a couple that lives above our church this last weekend. Dan and Marsha have become new friends of ours since we moved into their building. Dan asked me a few months ago if I would marry them and have the reception at the church, we agreed and these pictures are from the wedding.



It was cool to be able to help make their day special, Our church people really put a lot of work into making the evening a night to remember.

Destiny & Dad

Destiny & Dad
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

Hanging out with my daughter at my birthday bbq...Oh, where did my little girl go?

New BBQ

BBQ
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

The church suprised me with a 36th birthday party on Sunday and this new BBQ as a gift. Oh ya baby...Smokin!

Modern Times...

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Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

A couple more days and it will be here...and if all goes right, I will be seeing Dylan in Portland in September.

Here are some good Dylan Vidoes:
http://video.google.com/dylan.html

Taking the juice from grapes...

wine among us.JPG
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

"I am sending you grain, new wine and oil
enough to satisfy you fully...
He sends you abundant showers
both autumn and spring rains as before.

The threshing floors will be filled with grain
the vats will overflow with new wine and oil...

You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
and you will praise the name of the Lord God
who has worked wonders among you..."
-Joel 2:19, 23-24, 26

This grape vine is growing behind our church. I took a picture of this ripening cluster of grapes that face our building. They are a prophetic testimony of the word of the Lord to me in seasons past. The Lord visited me in a very difficult season with a deluge of revelation, refreshing and promise download that impacted my life powerfully. It was one of the most intense times of my spiritual life. He promised that He would send me wine...

Yesterday as I was going up towards the church a bunch of little kids came from behind the building and had handfuls of grapes. I asked them what they had and they showed me and then two young girls offered me some to taste. The juice squeezed onto my hands...juice stained my hand.

The Lord has sworn by His right hand and by His strong arm,
I will never again give your grain as food for your enemies;
Nor will foreigners drink your new wine for which you have labored.
But those who harvest it will eat it and praise the Lord;
And those who gather it will drink it in the courts of My sanctuary.
-Isaiah 62:8-9

What a set of promises...it is awesome to stand in the midst of the unfolding fulfillment of these words. I would have never thought how and where and with whom these words would come to pass. God's ways are mysterious indeed!

The Lord says, "The time is coming when there will be all kinds of food. People will still be harvesting crops when it's time to plow again. People will still be taking the juice from grapes when it's time to plant again. Wine will drip from the mountains and pour from the hills.

I will bring my people Israel back from captivity; they will build the ruined cities again, and they will live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink the wine from them; they will plant gardens and eat their fruit.

I will plant my people on their land, and they will not be pulled out again from the land which I have given them," says the Lord your God. -Amos 9:13-15

Angels, Books & Coffee

We added some great photos that my Dad took on a trip to New Orleans a few years ago. I framed them for our Necropolis Book store in our church. They turned out amazing. Good work dad, look out, people are wanting to purchase them now!

Know Me...

Know me...
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

“My soul – never be satisfied within a shadowy Christ. … I cannot know Christ through another person’s brains. I cannot love him with another man’s heart, and I cannot see him with another man’s eyes. … I am so afraid of living in a second-hand religion. God forbid that I should get a biographical experience. Lord save us from having borrowed communion. No, I must know him myself. O God, let me not be deceived in this. I must know him without fancy or proxy; I must know him on my own account.” -Unknown by me

The birthmark of those born of God is this nagging, unquenchable thirst that gnaws on the soul from the inside out.

It certainly does not originate from the putrid human heart that would rather feast on the refuse of the sows pen then dine at the table of the Divine. It's own presence then signals an invasion, a holy planting of the desires of God in the dark soil of fallen man's spirit. It is a sign of hope that if God would choose to place the celestial embers of His own longings in our hearts than He will also blow on them until they become the flames that He purposed them to become.

So if you yearn, if you hear the VOICE, be it faintly or with the crack of sound like thunder...rejoice that You have become a part of the focus of His delight. It is evidence, not the only clue, but one of them, that He is drawing you into Himself. You are a victim of the plan of God, to be known by Him. He has chose to reveal Himself to you and the tremors of that revelation are the holy longings within your quaking soul.

"I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee. Jeremiah 33:3

"Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatsoever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. -A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Be thankful this morning that you have been graced as the object of His desire and love. Be humbled by His mercy, that He would choose to awaken you to true life. Be encouraged, that your hunger is a sign that he intends to feed you...Himself.

The sword of the Lord

sword
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

Take up the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God -Eph 6:17

A birthday gift to myself...a Braveheart broadsword.

Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you'll live...at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade all of that from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take away our lives, but they'll never take our freeeedoooomm! -William Wallace

Jacob's Well phase two...

jacob's well phase two...
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

Well the miracles just keep unfolding around here at Jacob's Well. We just got the go ahead to expand into this side of the building. We will be adding a kids church and youth church in this red part of the building in this picture. From the left side of the door of Dairymart to the end of the building will be ours to house our growing church.

It needs some work inside but the space will work awesome for what we need now and will need sanctuary wise in the future. We are excited to get to work and put into reality the various dreams that our kids church leaders and youth leaders have in their hearts.

We are simply taking steps as God leads and provides and as He adds people to the church. We are staying in our economic means and acting in faith at the same time. Such a stretch but oh it feels so good!

Knowing God means...

luther
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

"For if I am ignorant of the nature, extent and limits of what I can and must do with reference to God, I shall be equally ignorant and uncertain of the nature, extent and limits of what God can and will do in me-though God in fact, works all in all (1 Cor. 12:6). Now, if I am ignorant of God's works and power, I am ignorant of God Himself; and if I do not know God, I cannot worship, praise, give thanks or serve Him, for I do not know how much I should attribute to myself and how much to Him. We need, therefore, to have in mind a clear-cut distinction between God's power and ours, and God's work and ours, if we would live a godly life." -Martin Luther from his work "The bondage of the Will"

Knowing God is essential to a healthy Christian life. Knowing what He does and doesn't do is critical to understanding Him. The light He gives us about Himself is revealed in His word. We can and should only walk in the light we have been given. To choose to ignore this light or deem it unprofitable to search it out, study it, pray through it and let it illuminate our spiritual minds is lazy.

Study to show yourself approved (2 Timothy 2:15) is as needed as well as singing, fellowship, prayer, sharing Christ and serving those He has called us to love. In fact if we have little knowledge about who God is, What God does and what He has called us to do, can we really do all those other things effectively?

"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I need to know...the thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do...to find the idea for which I can live and die." -Soren Kierkegaard

In the gospels Jesus shares about a moment when He will separate those who knew Him and those who didn't know Him. I never knew you is a haunting echo that will reverberate throughout eternity. Our eternal destinations are bound up in knowing God. I do not want to hear such a statement coming from the Lord, so I use the means that He has provided to come to know Him...His word.

Does God Elect Persons Based on Their Foreseen Faith?

Another great article that will require a bit of studious reading but
well worth the diligence.
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/foreseenfaith.html

Why Do We Pray For Others' Salvation?

Interesting article on the subject.
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/whypray.html

Kona fetch...

HPIM5228.JPG
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

She loves the water.

Time in the blue....

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Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

Life seems so much easier from this spot...we spent the day at the lake with the kids and Kona. Everyone enjoyed the beauty, the water and the oppurtunity to breathe a bit more relaxed like.

V is for vendetta

vendettamask
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

Watched this flick the other night, I liked it. It seems to have come and gone without much stir. It's from the matrix directors and in the tradition of those films, there is a lot of heavy thinking going on behind all the action. A lot of political stuff, culture war issues, so if that stuff bothers you stay away...they use the homosexuality issue to hammer a few points pretty hard. I think they were grasping for the most outcast issue to make their points though. It made me think though...especially when I was watching the news the other night, makes you wonder what is real and what is spin. Oh and Natalie Portman is in this film too...any film with her in it is easy to endure.

face of an angel

face of an angel
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

It is not only Christians who can paint with beauty, nor for that matter only Christians who can love or who have creative stirrings. Even though the image is now contorted, people are made in the image of God. This is who people are, whether or not they know or acknowledge it. God is the great Creator, and part of the unique mannishness of man, as made in Godís image, is creativity. Thus, man as man paints, shows creativity in science and engineering, and so on. Such activity does not require a special impulse from God, and it does not mean that people are not alienated from God and do not need the work of Christ to return to God. It does mean that man as man, in contrast to non-man, is creative.- Francis Schaeffer

I saw this in a store but it was too expensive but I couldnt get it out of my head. So a few weeks later i went in again and talked the girl down on the price. I told her this angel was meant for our church...she agreed. Now she is at rest in our building where she belongs.

Give me a drink...

woman at the well
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

Here is a shot of a great statue I found for our church building. It fits the whole Jacob's Well theme...woman at the well, etc. It stands about four feet tall.

too funny

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Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

made me laugh