Kubecki.com

First, a quick baby note - I’ve figured out how to post pics to WordPress (yes, it’s extremely easy - I was making it way more difficult than necessary). So, that means that I will be updating “old” pics that were lost in the migration, as well as posting some new pics now that he’s home and settled.

Secondly, a quick site note - I’m going to be going through and cleaning up formatting on the old posts, applying “categories,” etc. I may also remove some old posts that are no longer relevant (like stuff relating to site updates, Blogger now that I’m using WordPress, etc.).

And finally, here they are, about a week and half’s worth of Random Thoughts… (I’ve been building this post for a while.)

• Desiring God blog recaps the recent DG Pastor’s Conference
• Pastor John Samson reflects on exactly why eating a piece of fruit caused all the suffering in the world
• Charles Biggs summarizes Calvin’s interpretation of Scripture
• Tim Challies is writing a book on discernment, and gives us a very good nutshell definition of this critical skill
• Strange BaptistFire shares some thoughts from Ernest Reisinger on the doctrine of limited atonement
• Expository Thoughts offers some ideas for pastors to evaluate their sermons
• Think About These Things shares Puritan Thomas Boston’s words on the rejoicing of the saints at God’s final judgment
• Justin Taylor points us to some links where we can all enjoy seminary-level classes for free
• Reformation Theology gives some pointers on how to know if we are saved
• Tim Challies reviews Wayne Grudem’s newest, Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?
• The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t like Tony Dungy’s comment about his faith, so Melinda at Stand to Reason defends the coach’s comments
• D. J. Phillips is blogging through his (very powerful) testimony in a multi-part post at Pyromaniacs: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Carl Trueman vents his frustrations about preaching to postmoderns
• Strange BaptistFire asks four questions that have not received the attention that they deserve in today’s Church, from Mark Dever’s 9 Marks of a Healthy Church
• Timmy Brister reflects on the death of Anna Nicole Smith, from a Christian viewpoint
• Tim Challies really wants this Lego set, and I do too…
• Speaking of gift ideas for me…
• Unashamed Workman is running an excellent series about how various preachers prepare to teach
• John Piper discusses how the “Prosperity Gospel” is not only wrong, but is deceitful and deadly
• Erik Raymond thinks a lot of American evangelicalism is like lite beer
• Pulpit Magazine stresses the importance of prayer with an essay from J. C. Ryle
• John Piper pays tribute to the late Dr. Bruce Metzger, who died Tuesday
• Frank Turk reminds us that the Bible is actually pretty easy to “get” when we let it…
• Erik Raymond gives a good definition of reformed dispensationalism
• Al Mohler reports out that the secular world is finally figuring out that self-esteem is dangerous

‘Til next time…

As the new year started, I decided to upgrade to the new Blogger. It’s apparently quite cool, all of the things that you can do like new “layouts” with drag-and-drop design, etc. I say “apparently” because it turns out, I will evidently never be able to use those features.

So… I believe I am going to migrate the site to WordPress sometime soon. So keep an eye out for changes to the site, including URL changes (sorry).

UPDATE: Obviously, the site has been migrated. I’ll be updating the template sometime in the next few days, but in the meantime, the site is back up. Also, note that images are offline for the moment. Sorry!

It’s been a while since I’ve had random thoughts - they’ve all been focused on the baby! Seriously, though, here are something things that have caught my interest in the blogosphere lately:

The Problem with Mere Christianity
No, it’s not a critique of C. S. Lewis… It’s an article at Christianity Today by J. Todd Billings: “So-called divisive doctrines get pushed to the side as nonessentials, even when they are truly important.”

Horatius Bonar on Error
Speaking of what is truly important, OldTruth.com provides some 19th century advice for a problem that continues today - speaking truth without fear (albeit gracefully, of course).

New Blog from Piper and Co.
There is a brand new Desiring God blog that has been added to my daily reading. Currently, they’re covering the DG Pastor’s Conference. Good stuff from all involved, especially the always insightful R. C. Sproul.

Screwtape Movie
A lot of folks are blogging the news that Hollywood is making a movie out of Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, so I might as well jump on that bandwagon, too…

Christian Mysticism
Irish Calvinist blogs on his own personal experience as an “evangelical mystic” and the problems that lie therein. (With some bonus insight from Edwards…)

Al Mohler, Renaissance Man
And lastly, Centurion links to a video of Al Mohler that, well, if you are at all familiar with Mohler, is absolutely hysterical.

Atticus James Kubecki was born January 31, 2007, at 4:17 PM EST. He weighed 7 lbs, 14 oz. at birth, and measured 20 inches. Mom and baby (and Dad, too!) are doing fine. Please pray for the continued health of the baby and Mom, as well as for his big sister McKaylyn, who spent the day in bed sick. (And praise God for friends like Chad and Jenny who are taking care of Mc during the delivery and hospital stay!)

OK, first of all, shame on me. Almost four weeks into 2007, and still no posting.

As you can see, the baby is doing just fine. He got his biceps from me, of course. (Note that the picture is a little old - it was taken 12/16/06).

Shannon, at almost 37 weeks (!), is ready to have the baby. She hasn’t been feeling well, and her BP has been a bit difficult. So please keep her comfort and health in your prayers.

On the plus side, they will most likely not let Shannon go the full 40 weeks, so they will probably induce early. The next posting on this subject could be a baby pic…

Until next time…

What a year 2006 has been! As we get ready to head into the new year, I’m thinking about everything that has happened this past year. The most important, of course, is the pregnancy. Praise God for that! And with only 47 days left until our due date, the time is growing shorter…

There has indeed been a lot going on this past year, but I plan for lots more in the coming year, Lord willing. I will be posting some resolutions for myself for the coming year soon, so keep watching. (And yes, one of them is to be more consistent with my blogging. Maybe the new blogger version will help…).

This time of year is busy I think for everyone, and for the Kubeckis it is no different.

Just as an example, our schedule this week:
Monday - Mom, Bible Study
Tuesday - McKaylyn, Gymnastics
Wednesday - Mom and Dad, Register for Baby (WAY overdue!)
Thursday - Mom and Dad, Bible Study
Friday - Mom and Dad, Childbirth Classes

Whew! And that’s not even counting the weekends, which have been even busier.
All of this is by way of saying, shame on me for not blogging more.

So, here’s a quick update on things:

Pregnancy

Things are going really well. The baby is very healthy at 30 weeks now (only 67 days left til our due date!), and has been rolling around like Sonic the Hedgehog. This has lead to some soreness for Shannon, but we are thankful. Lord willing, we will have some good images to share after this coming weekend, so stay tuned…

Life

Again, life is busy. Not much else to say, other than I am taking a much-needed break from work from Christmas to New Year’s. Looking forward to some time with Shannon (McKaylyn will be at her dad’s, so we will miss her!).

Faith

Struggling with getting my personal quiet time refocused, so please pray for me to get back into regular Bible study and prayer…

Until next time…

John MacArthur shares guidelines from Scripture about when to confront sin vs. when to forgive and forget, in “Let ‘Em Know or Let It Go?”

How do we know when we to confront and when to quietly forgive and forget? That’s a good question because most people seem to err on one side or the other. Some people think it is best to overlook every offense and take pride in their tolerance. However, Paul confronted the Corinthians for tolerating sin in the church and rebuked them for failing to deal with a man living in sin (1 Cor. 5).

On the other side of the issue are people who confront over any slight infraction and make themselves intolerable.

Read the rest of the article here.

There has been a lot of commentary in and out of the blogosphere on the Ted Haggard situation. I’ve been hesitant to say anything on the subject, because I didn’t want to jump in too quickly, but rather be “slow to speak.” I may still visit this topic in the future, but for the moment, I’ll direct you to Rick Phillips’ commentary on the Reformation21 blog, which is probably the most insightful and most balanced analysis I’ve seen of the situation and our reactions to it:

Rick Phillips: Just Like Ted Haggard?

Well, well, well. Here we go. Phil Johnson is Fed Up. And he’s letting us know.

So… What’s he all fed up about? He’s fed up about the Emerging Church. He’s fed up with the way people react to his various criticisms of the Emerging Church. He’s fed up with Rob Bell. He’s fed up with Mark Driscoll’s language.

The timing here is fortuitous for me as well, since I just recently finished up Mark Driscoll’s book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev (review here). So I’ve been running over a lot of these same questions myself recently, and I continue to do so.

In my review, I tried to strike the right tone. I wanted to balance grace and truth, after the model of our Lord and Savior. Of course, I know that my grace will never be His perfect grace, my truth will never be His perfect truth, and my balance will never be His perfect balance, for that matter. But I do try. And here’s the pattern I see, well, emerging (no pun intended).

When I try to balance grace and truth, I err on the side of grace. Up to a point.

By this I mean that I find myself holding back on the truth.

In my Driscoll review, for example, there were many more things that needed to be said. There were, for example, plenty of things to say about his sense of humor. While I sometimes have a junior-high mentality sometimes myself, I don’t wear that as though I’m proud of it. There were other things to be said about how some of his beliefs play themselves out, or, rather, fail to play themselves out. And so on.

But, in the interest of grace and truth, I tried to balance my review. I don’t want to be overly critical, because he is doing some good things out there. But I don’t want to be giving a rousing endorsement of all of his methods either.

And therein lies the struggle.

How do we balance the good with the bad? How do we balance the grace with the truth? And how do we do it in such a way that the message will be heard? I think this is truly what has Phil fed up. I think that he has tried to point out error in the “Emerging Church” out of pure love for Christ and His Church, and trying to “restore… in a spirit of gentleness” but still trying to “rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.”

But that’s not how it’s taken.

In this day and age, and in the inclusivist error that has overtaken so much of the “church,” any rebuke, any attempt at restoration, any correction is taken as an unfair criticism, no matter how well grounded in scriptural truth. This would be understandable if we were talking about non-believers here, but we’re talking about “the church.”

Or, as one of Phil’s commenters puts it, “The very idea that you strive to defend Godly conduct TO BELIEVERS, is rather exhausting.”

So we get fed up.

As the commenter said, it is exhausting to defend Godly conduct. But I’ll go one step further than that - in this day and age, it is also exhausting to have to defend even the simplest of scriptural truths.

Them: “X.”
You: “But the Bible says Y.”
Them: “I don’t think it says that.”
You: “Here: chapter, verse, right here, it says, ‘This is a trustworthy statement: Y.’”
Them: “Yeah, but it doesn’t mean ‘Y.’”
You: “Of course it does. It says, ‘Y.’ Y means Y.”
Them: “Well, it may have meant Y then, but it doesn’t mean Y today.”
And so on. And so on.

And that’s just for basic propositional statements. Forget simple doctrinal matters like, oh, say, the Gospel. Or the atonement. Or the call to a devout and holy life. Or…

I’m not even going to touch the complex issues. (Well, for now.)

So, as I said, we get fed up. We get fed up, and like Phil, we just break down and say, enough already. Enough with being nice. This is just plain wrong. I’m tired of trying to be “graceful” about it, as if a mere statement of fact or truth could be “ungraceful.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think Phil was graceful. I think that he violated no standard of decency, propriety, or courtesy. I think that he was tremendously patient, even when saying he’s fed up. I pray that I can be that graceful when I’m fed up. I know I often am not. (I am trying.)

But the fact remains…

Phil is right. It’s time to be fed up. It’s time to stop erring on the side of grace. That doesn’t mean err on the side of truth, either. It means we need to push harder for the balance. We can’t be fearful of men and think “what will they say? Will they think I’m too harsh?” We must speak the truth in love. Not neglecting the love, but speaking the truth in love is ultimately about getting the truth in there.

So… What next?

It will be interesting to see where this all leads (if anywhere). I will be very curious to see what action results, or if it will stay merely discussion. And I don’t mean for Phil so much as myself and others.

Because it is hard to speak the truth in love. It is easier to say, “well, it will work out” or “well, I don’t want to offend.” I don’t want to offend. But I fear that I am offending Christ by not being more truthful. And let’s face it - I don’t want to make Him fed up with me…