PRAGUE - Czech it out

Go ahead, try and find out the date your cell phone contract expires.
I had to go to the nearest AT&T store to get that info, and I've got to wait another two months.
I hate my phone and the fact that I have to go out in the back yard or risk dropping the call. That's pretty inconvenient at 113 degrees.

Because of the time zone we're in I was able to watch some of Wimbledon before heading out. I didn't see the Federer/Hrbaty match but they showed some tape during their post-match interview with Federer. Hrbaty doesn't take himself too seriously and there were lots of laughs during the match.
For no apparent reason they always put out two chairs for each player. They can only sit in one of them during the change-over, and they're side by side, but it's tradition to put out two. During one change-over Hrbaty asked Roger if he could sit next to him. Federer grinned and said "sure." So these two guys sat side by side for that 5 minutes or so. I don't know what they talked about but they seemed to be having a good time because they spent most of it chuckling. In the interview afterward Roger said Hrbaty explained it was probably his last appearance at Wimbledon and he wanted the opportunity to sit next to the #1 player in the world.
How cool is that? More athletes should be like that.

What's right isn't always easy. And what's easy isn't always right.

From my perspective energy independence isn't so much about national security as it is economic stability. I think that in the current geopolitical environment the chances of a security threat due to an embargo are relatively slim. But what it would do to our economic stability....
China will buy every barrel of oil they can get their hands on. That throws the supply/demand balance way off whack and threatens our national economic health. If we used a combination of domestic energy sources - clean coal, oil from our own fields, nuclear, solar, etc. - we would be immune from world swings in that supply/demand balance.

You probably heard about the Pew Research poll that was published today on attitudes about religion in America. It seems that 57% of Evangelicals believe that other religions also provide a path to heaven.
On the NBC news tonight they talked to some experts on religion in America and one of them said something that struck me as confirmation of what we've talked about at Pathway. He said that most religious people (not just Evangelicals) are functionally illiterate about what their faith teaches. In the absence of any real knowledge about their own faith they assume other faiths are equally valid for obtaining eternal life.
That's why we began Pathway Bible Church.
It's clear from the NT that the church was designed by God for believers, to mature them in their faith and send them out into the world to spread the good news. We've too often turned the church into an evangelistic tool, and that requires dumbing down the teaching of the NT to make it understandable to unbelievers. You don't serve meat to infants, and those outside the faith aren't even that.
We've also (again, IMHO) failed to take into consideration the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit who can speak to the heart of an unbeliever who hears what he may not understand.
If that guy was correct, and if Evangelicals think other roads lead to heaven (despite what Acts 4:12 says) because they're illiterate re. their faith, then they certainly are not going to serve as witnesses to God's saving grace through Christ's death. Why should they?
When the church deviates from God's assigned role everybody loses. Its people don't mature in their faith and they don't go out as witnesses to the gospel.

I got three more lessons edited today. Progress slow but sure.