I would like to address today a major annoyance in blogging.  I'm talking about you spammers from cash loans, payday loans, discount prescription drugs and the like.

Statement of fact...  I will NEVER approve your comments.  I put the comment feature up for people who genuinely want to discuss the topics.  When I see a name that even looks like spam, I immediately and enthusiastically hit DELETE.  Now I would prefer that you don't use my blog to try and sell your less than ethical *crap*.

Seriously, I'm a web professional in my day job.  I know how the internet works and your trying to improve your placement on search engines by getting as many link backs to your site as possible.  I dig that, I understand.  However, find another fool who will let any comment just pass through.  This will not and will never be me.

So, if you want to engage a conversation with me:

• Don't add your website unless it is relevent to the conversation
• Address the conversation directly.  Mention the topic or something from the post you're commenting on.
• Don't be a critic of my theme, I chose it because I like it.
• I don't use wordpress, I will never use wordpress, so don't try to send me a link to a wordpress theme site.
• Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, pick a pleasant Gravitar.  Some of the ones I've seen are just mean.

I've been quiet on here for a while.  For that I apologize.  It's been kind of intentional, however, I'm going to invoke my right not to explain why.

I've been doing a lot of studying lately, though.  I recently started using a new bible study software package that is just incredible.  I'll do a full review of the package at another time.  I want to make sure that I have a grasp on all it can do before I start talking about it.

My goal with this post is to go over some of the things that I'm studying, not to go in depth of any one of the passages or topics.

My most recent study has been on 1 Timothy.  As I prepare for the Sarasota ministry, I wanted to refresh myself on Pauls admonition to Timothy on how a church is meant to be run.  Let me say, for being an instructional book on how to run something I walk away with a look at a lot of why's.  From the qualities of an elder to fighting the good fight of faith, there are a lot of answers to why these things are needed.

I think I'm going to do a whole study on fighting the good fight of faith in the near future.  Which is in part due to the new software package that I've been using.  One of the nices features of this package is that you can hover over a word in the text on certain version of the bible and it'll pop up the Hebrew/Greek definition from Strongs and show an expository on the passage from, I think, The Matthew Henry Commentaries.  I used to take Fight the good fight of faith at face value, when you fight the fight of faith, fight well.  Well, when I looked at the passage and hovered over the two words fight, I discovered that they were two different words, The first fight, means, well, fight.  The second fight however, means the place in which you fight.  So when you read fight the good fight of faith, you could read it as Fight well in the areana of faith.  Faith is the battlefield in which we fight!  LEt's fight for victory on that battlefield.

Anywho, that was for free.

Some other passages are Mark 4, since that is what we're studying on Sunday mornings.  I've been looking at Romans 8 as well, since it is one of my favorite passages. 

In the near future I'm going to jump into studying the Church of Leodicea from Revelation 3 again.  Now that I have all of these tools at my fingertips I want to re-visit some of my favorite scriptures.

I'm going to delve into Jude, Hebrews and start going through the minor prophets soon as well.

Eventually I'll start putting some of the things I'm learning into the blog, but for now, I just wanted to let everyone know what I'm studying and going to be studying.

So look forward to all that, a book review for Obstacles Welcome and a Software review.  That should put me in a position to be busy for a while.  Now that I've promised it, I must deliver. :)