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Bible Challenge Week 9

Howard — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:02:52 +0000

It hardly seems like 9 weeks ago that we started this journey! I hope that you are feeling as blessed by the experience as I am. Each time I read scripture I find God’s message for me. Sometimes the message is one of learning from the lessons of a nation lost in their own wills and without any guidance. Sometimes the lesson is a comforting and encouraging reminder from the voice of one after God’s own heart. And sometimes the message is directly to me – written over 1,000 years ago but speaking directly to my heart.

God’s message for me this week came last Sunday in the reading from 1 Corinthians 1:17 “For Christ didn’t send me to baptize, but to preach the Good News – and not with clever speech, for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power.” Reading these words, I felt a great conviction to preach, not in such a way that brings me compliments and makes people feel good, but in a way that draws people to Christ. My job isn’t to add to the numbers of the church rolls, but to tell people of the good news of Jesus and the salvation that is freely available to them. This is my charge and my soul’s passion.

So let me put this simply – there is only one way to fulfill the emptiness of your life and that is through the greatness of God. But this greatness is not something that we can earn – in fact our selfish hearts keep us from connecting with God. But God loved us enough that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place for our sinful, selfish nature that we can have the abundant life that God intends for us. This is all God’s free grace offered to us through faith. Our true life can only be had through faith in Jesus Christ. It is when we trust in Christ as our Savior and turn over our will to His as our Lord that we have the life that God intends for us. And God promises that when we live in this faith, we will live with him forever. Without this faith, we will die in our sins and be forever separated from God.

Friends, more than scripture, I hope that you are discovering Christ as we read together. May He continue to be revealed to you as we seek His Word!

Restaurant Review – Nobi

Howard — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:39:40 +0000

To me, the difference between a good place and a great place is how they handle the simple things. The traditional Vietnamese char-grilled pork sandwich (bahn mi), for example, is markedly simple. French roll buttered inside and stuffed with cucumber, carrot, and maybe some diakon mixed into a tangy slaw, sliced jalapeño, char-grilled pork, and maybe some cilantro. Simple enough. Properly prepared, a bahn mi makes you wish you had room for one or two more. Improperly prepared and you hardly finish half of it.

Nobi has gone a long way towards tilting the scale towards a great bahn mi. The bread is fresh with a crisp outside and a soft inside. The grilled pork is well seasoned and cooked just right. The veggie “slaw” (for lack of a better term) is fresh and tangy. The sandwich has good balance and is definitely a great find for Galveston county. While one might encounter better if one ventures into the heavily Asian areas of west Bellaire Blvd, this is definitely the best in the area and worth a regular stop for a quick fix. My only request would be the addition of some cilantro, but the lack of it did not overly detract from the sandwich as a whole.

Nobi has a simple, but rather full menu for it’s location. Located in a small strip center that is anchored by a Shell station, Nobi provides a fast food atmosphere with quality handmade fare. Their iced coffee is good and, while I cannot attest to the taste of their entrees, the appearance and scent of a neighboring table’s lunch has me thinking about trying some next time. Their shrimp spring rolls were rather plain and lacked the vegetables, fresh basil, and flavorings that I am used to in spring rolls. I’d pass on them next time in favor of their egg rolls, which I would gladly eat my fill of if they came “all you can eat.”

Nobi is family run and has very friendly and helpful staff. They are more than willing to answer any questions for those new to their cuisine. While many other Vietnamese sandwich places have counter staff who, while friendly, have limited English and may be intimidating for an English-only patron, Nobi’s staff are very easy to understand and are not intimidating.

Stop by and support this great eatery! Who knows, maybe with a little interest we can get Nobi to expand into the tapioca tea market? (Nothing better than a bahn mi and an iced espresso with coffee jellies!)

Nobi Asian Grill

3640 FM 528 – in Shell shopping center at 528 and Blackhawk

Price: About $3 a sandwich, 6.99 for entrees

Food Quality: ****

Service: *****

Ambience: ***

Notes: The best sandwich in Friendswood! Buy two and save one for later!

Bible Challenge week 8

Howard — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:02:57 +0000

8 weeks down and now we’ve completed 2 books! I hope you are getting a lot out of the readings. It is amazing how God continues to reveal verses to me that I’ve read over time and time again. Continue seeking God in these daily readings.

Praise God that we are in the much easier to read section of Isaiah! Chapter 40 begins what scholars call the “book of comfort”. It is filled with promises of God’s loving restoration of Israel and speaks of God’s salvation to come through Jesus. One of my favorite chapters of scripture is Isaiah 44, which speaks of the foolishness of idols. It’s great to read and see the fallacy of idols exposed, but it is also a great challenge to us. While we may not carve out idols from wood or shape them from metal, there are many things in life that we put ahead of God. There are any of a number of things that we give worth to that really have no eternal value and can give us nothing in return. We can get lured into believing that money will bring happiness, but it won’t. Neither will selfish living or good deeds or power. While these may at times give us a false sense of worth, their ‘blessings’ are fleeting. We’re left with nothing but emptiness and a continued longing for worthiness.

We worship what we think will give us worth. But all the ‘worth’ of the world will never really fill the need of our souls. Our true worth is an eternal worth that can only be given by God. Jesus came to give us worth – to be the way by which God adopts us into His family. Our worth is in Christ alone, and nothing of this world will replace that worth.

We can either continue to see after worthless idols, or we can seek our worth in Christ.

Real Cheese Chile Con Queso

Howard — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:53:57 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, I love the standard rotel-velvetta queso that dominates the queso landscape, but there are times when I want a queso that doesn’t come from a can and a box of cheese that is shelf stable. So I went on a search for queso recipes with fresh and perishable ingredients to fulfill my quality queso urge. Surprisingly, there aren’t that many out there – good ones at least. The best I found was actually from a Texan living in New York. Living in Texas and having some better resources available, I’ve adapted it a bit for my taste.

Chile Con Queso

Ingredients:

1/2 onion diced (about 1/2 cup)

3 jalapeno peppers diced fine

2 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoons of flour

1 1/4 cup of milk

3 cups of shredded cheese, (preferred Queso Asadero or Queso Quesadilla. You can mix with cheddar if you like)

2 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced

Salt to taste

Melt the butter in a saucepan on medium-low heat, and then cook the onions and peppers for about five minutes or until onions are translucent.
Whisk in the flour and cook for about 30 seconds.
Add the milk to the pot, and cook on medium, whisking constantly until sauce is thick, about five minutes. Stir in tomatoes.
Turn heat down to low, and a 1/4-cup at a time, slowly add the shredded cheese stirring into the white sauce until completely melted. Repeat. (Key to smooth sauce is adding slowly and allowing each batch to completely melt)
Add salt to taste.

Bible Challenge Week 7

Howard — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:51:33 +0000

7 weeks down! Next week will be 2 months! Keep it up!

We had a number of wonderful readings this week – from Isaac not learning his father’s lesson about lying about his wife to a shift in the readings in Isaiah to some narrative for a change, but I want to focus on our reading from Matthew and point out something that you likely missed. Jesus tells his disciples that the key to becoming the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is to humble yourself as a child. Now in today’s society that hold children in high regard, this doesn’t seem to make much sense. If you are a parent, your life today likely revolves around your children and fulfilling their needs and encouraging them to grow in a number of ways. We fill our schedules with events and programs to benefit our children and help them grow into well rounded adults. But in the time of Jesus, this was not the case. Children were considered to be among the lowest of society and had no real value attached to them until they were old enough to begin to provide value – i.e. – able to help with the crops or animals or whatever the family business produced. Jesus’ call to humility wasn’t a call to place ourselves in a position of reliance alone, which kids today still need adults to provide for them. His call was also to discovering that our only worth is to our Heavenly Father – that the world around us places no real value on us unless we can produce value.

Our worth does not come in who we are or what we do, but in who God is. We have eternal worth because God has chosen to adopt us into His family. The world around us could care less about us outside of what we can do for the world. But God loves us regardless of what we can do. God’s love is what gives us worth. And it is being considered worthy by God that makes us the greatest in the Kingdom of God.