Wanting to come home

Pastor Don posted recently on the Rebuild Lakeshore website about the Shiyou's who will be returning to Lakeshore for Christmas and our hope to get them into their apartment by then. He also wrote about an elderly man from the community, Mr. George, who would like so much to return to his home. When talking with Mr. George yesterday, He said that having the team come work on his home was one of the best Christmas presents he could have received.

Here are some pictures of the progress taking place this week to get both the Shiyou's and Mr. George into their homes. The team here this week from First Baptist Church North Augusta is working tirelessly at both of these homes and getting so much accomplished.

The Shiyou's home

Mr. George's home

Christ's death, fighting for joy, and a lust saturated world

So I have sat down to blog the last couple of nights, but have refrained from doing so. Not because there is nothing going on around here, as we continue to have volunteer groups come from all over the nation, working on several homes, and are still seeing over 500 locals come through the distribution center on Wednesday alone, but because I've totally enjoyed taking every spare minute I have in the evenings to read. Here's the most recent list of books, all of which I recommend, that I have been reading.

Christ Our Mediator by CJ Mahaney makes the gospel a matter of first importance. This short book is packed with challenges for every Christian. Most of us are familiar with images portraying Christ's death, but Mahaney says that it is only the preaching of the gospel, not the depiction, that God promises to accompany with saving effect. Christ or mediator (1 Timothy 2:5-6) had to bear the cup - that cup being the wrath of God for our sins - containing the full fierceness of God's holy wrath poured out against sin and intended for sinful man to drink. I think one of the biggest things that hit me as I was reading was that Christ had to experience abandonment of the Father, because He took on my sins.


In When the Darkness Will not Lift John Piper explains that any Christian can go through a period of depression and times when it seems like joy is out of reach. Piper uses examples in scripture and examples from other Christians to encourage believers as they fight for joy. I highly recommend this book and I, personally can't wait to read John Piper's When I Don't Desire God: How To Fight For Joy.

You can pre-order the book and find excerpts from When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait For God - And Joy can be found at Good News and Crossway



A few years ago I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl so I was familiar with Joshua Harris and his honesty and upfrontness he shares in those two books. And again, I think Joshua Harris does a great job in this book of being upfront with us and honestly viewing lust as not just a sinful guy problem, but a sinful human problem. I think this would be great book for anyone struggling with lust, in any way, but also for those who aren't as aware of the lustful struggles that many men and women face.

lessons from Lakeshore

My friend Sarah from Florida was here a few weeks ago. After returning home from Lakeshore she listed on her blog 50 lessons she learned while she was here. Many of these great lessons I have also learned since I arrived in Lakeshore 6 months ago. I cannot articulate to the extent that I would like to the things that I’ve been learning through life experiences, through relationships I’ve built, and through the reading/teaching of God’s word and the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Here are a few of those 50 lessons:

7) Some of the greatest discussions can be held in a cramped hallway, outside walking through the mud, or in an overgrown storage pantry.
9) The most essential part of the day may be the thirty-second prayer that helps you get out of bed.
11) Spending twenty minutes just listening to someone is rarely a waste of time.
18) 5:30 am is a wicked time to have to wake up.
19) At 5:30 am it doesn’t really matter whether or not your clothes match.
23) God is glorified through things that may not seem to matter much to us - a yummy meal, a clean kitchen, a squeaky clean pot, a book read to a snotty-nosed four year-old.
24) God’s Word is as essential to a healthy day as a good breakfast.
27) No matter how old you are, you are capable of saying stupid, hurtful things and asking forgiveness.
32) An encouraging word and a hug can do more to lift the spirits than chocolate.
34) If you are willing to make a fool out of yourself and laugh about it, you will be a much more appealing person to be around.
44) There is nothing as refreshing as worshiping with other believers and hearing God’s Word preached.
47) There comes a point when sleep takes precedence over almost everything else.
49) Hearty laughter with good friends is almost as relaxing as a hot bath.
50) When you arrive with a plan to serve others, it is almost inevitable that you will come away having been served yourself.

concrete and paint fumes

This week at Ms. Lynn's, a few folks from First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, MS worked on several different tasks. They worked on putting the frames around the windows, some of the plumbing, and several differnt things in the bathroom.

A team from the west coast (California and Oregon) poured Mr. Sherman's slab. Mr. Sherman and his wife are residents of Lakeshore and are rebuilding on the property where they lived prior to Katrina.
The same team from California and Oregon worked at James and Ms. Bea's house, priming and painting their home.

Our friends from Immanuel Baptist and Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY worked on several projects this past week, most of which included mudding, sanding, and painting.

Here they work at Ms. Lambert's home, which got painted this week.

And at the church office. Putting both a second coat of paint on the railings and doing some sheetrock work and painting in the bathroom.

And here at Ms. Redford's painting and putting up the little wooden decorative things on the porch.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

So as the ladies and I have been going through Pursuing God by Jim Elliff we came to the third chapter, which, honestly, I had a hard time understanding and teaching. The title of the chapter is "Is God Angry Anymore?" basically having to do with the wrath of God, a topic I confess that I have many questions on. So in doing a little more studying I listened to Jonathan Edwards sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". Edwards, in this sermon, was as straightfoward with the wrath of God and God's anger towards those out of Christ as one can get. I can see how this would be hard to hear by the "hard-hearted congregation" it was preached to in July of 1741.

Here's a exerpt from the sermon that expresses "the awful weight of sin, the wrath of an infinitely holy God, and the unexpectedness of the moment when God will execute justice" (http://edwards.yale.edu)

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell."

"O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment."

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God can be read here
It can also be downloaded and heard here

moving forward on Ms. Peewee's home

This week a group from Tennessee tackled Ms. Peewee's house, following the group from Mississippi who constructed the front porch. They got a ton accomplished from putting the windows and doors in, wrapping, siding, constructing the roof, and just in before this evening's rain putting the shingles on.