So Long Blogspot!

Well, the time has come for the blogspot site and me to part ways. I'm happy to tell everyone that I now have my own website! It's CaseyHarpe.com and I'm excited to see how the Lord will use it to glorify Himself. I hope everyone will come visit the new site and leave plenty of comments to let me know what you think.

Many thanks to Kevin Lester for all his hard work and patience in setting up the new site. He did a wonderful job, in my opinion, and I'm endebted to him for everything. A good bit of work has gone into the new site and I appreciate everything he's done. Thanks Kevin!

I'm going to leave this site up, at least for a while, (how long, I don't know) mainly for a backup but barring some catastrophe on the new site, everything from now on will be posted there.

Thanks to everyone for reading and I hope to see you at the new site!


Grace & Peace
Casey

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." 2 Corinthians 13:14

New Site Forthcoming!

It looks like the new website is coming right along quickly and will be ready very soon. I'm going to leave this blog in place and I've already imported most of the stuff from here to the new site so the older blogs will be available in two places.

I'm excited to have a new site and I hope everyone finds plenty of cool new features to play with and I hope it's easy to navigate. The new site will have lots of pictures, links to some of my favorite sites around the Internet, as well as some resources such as sermons from Southern Seminary's chapel services.

If you have any ideas about what you'd like to see, let me know. One of the advantages of the Internet is the vast amount of information that is literally at our fingertips. There are tons of things out there that can easily be incorporated.

Thanks for reading!

Casey

Created in His Image - Psalm 8

Recently I heard a sermon preached on the importance of remembering that Christians, "God's workmanship," (Ephesians 2:10) need to understand that we are empowered by God and should expect His favor to be on us. According to the speaker, we should expect the blessing of God upon whatever we try to do as ministers.

The sermon was in the context of speaking to present and future ministers of the Gospel and his point was that we should expect God to bless our ministry. While he was mostly true to the text he used, I believe this particular preacher was reading it with a false understanding of the whole of Scripture.

Of course it's true that we are God's workmanship and that we are creatures made in His image, but this should not be cause for us to think that God owes us anything or that we are guaranteed to be blessed by "success" in whatever we choose to do. The speaker I heard didn't say that explicitly, but his point, I think, came dangerously close to going down that trail. His point was that we should not be content to live with the same circumstances as the rest of the world. His implication was that because we are followers of the one true Lord of the universe, we should expect more.

I'm not saying the guy was a heretic, I just hope people understand that God is totally in control of everything. God's definition of "success" is usually quite different from ours. That means that if we are experiencing times of great blessing or hard times, God's in control. It may be hard, even impossible, for us to understand, but He's in control. I think specifically of two people as examples of this in my life: my friends Jean Ray and Theresa Norris. In both of their cases, it's really hard to see the good that God has planned.

Mrs. Jean is basically stuck at home with 2 broken legs; Miss Theresa recently found out she has liver failure and needs a transplant. Both situations are terrible and yet both of these women are examples of God's mercy and love. While they are going through miserably difficult times, both of these women have been forgiven of their sin and will spend eternity in the presence of a loving, merciful, just, and holy God. No matter what happens to them in this world, no matter how bad or how hard it gets, they both trust in Jesus Christ and will therefore spend eternity with Him. The God of the universe who spoke everything into existence is the same God who's involved in our lives at all times.

This is what makes the fact of Jesus' life so amazing. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Immanuel, God in human flesh, came and walked the earth in real human history. He was, and is, a real human person. He was crushed according to the Father's will, according to Scripture, and he really died; He didn't merely fall asleep. Three days later He was raised from the dead, a full bodily resurrection and subsequently ascended to heaven. Now, He sits at the right hand of God the Father, making intercession for us.

There really is a place called heaven. It's not just a place of enlightenment in our minds or some dreamed up "Atlantis" in the clouds. When Jesus returns, to claim his bride, all who trust in Him as their Lord and Saviour will be in His presence forever and ever, Amen.

Likewise, there really is a Hell. It's not just a place we talk about to make children "act right" in public. There really is a place of "outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 25:30. Being totally given over to our sin in eternal separation from God is a terrible place to be...a place where none of us will want to be but where every one of us deserves to be.

In thinking of our place in God's creation, I think Psalm 8 gives a great description of God's glory and how everything has been created for the purpose of His glory. Specifically, verse 4 points out that while humans have been crowned with God's glory and majesty, and are made to rule over His creation, we don't deserve His grace in the least.


1 “O LORD, our Lord,
How majestic is Your name in all the earth,
Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!
2 From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength
Because of Your adversaries,
To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.
3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
4 What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?
5 Yet You have made him a little lower than God,
And You crown him with glory and majesty!
6 You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
7 All sheep and oxen,
And also the beasts of the field,
8 The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,
Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD, our Lord,
How majestic is Your name in all the earth!”
Psalm 8

May you know Him better and worship Him continuously.
Grace & Peace

Casey

Winter Storm

Just to let everyone know, I survived the Louisville Ice Storm 2009 with no problems. I stayed in my dark and cold apartment despite the many warnings from campus security. I know it's not the best idea in the world to try to stick it out through such conditions without heat or electricity but honestly, it wasn't that bad. I have a down comforter and a Mag Lite flashlight, so this Boy Scout was able to stay quite comfortable and safe throughout the entire power outage.

I did spend one night with my friend Michael who had power the whole time, but to tell the truth, I was colder there than in my own apartment. It was my own fault though. To keep my load light, I only took a small blanket to his house and just slept on the floor. I slept well but my feet were a little cold. While in my apartment, the temperature was quite low (I meant to get a thermometer to see just how cold, but never did) but goose down does wonders for keeping heat in so I was toasty warm the whole time. I don't know how cold it did get but I do know that there was a little bit of ice forming in the sink where I had the faucets dripping. Some of the water that splashed to the side would freeze.

The initial snow storm wasn't bad but the second day everything turned to ice and there was accumulation of ice on some trees and power lines that was over an inch thick, by my unofficial measurement. There were thousands of people here without power after the ice did its thing. As a matter of fact there are still a lot of people without power...or "without electric," as the locals say. We didn't know when we'd get power restored. Sunday afternoon, I saw 2 trucks that made me more hopeful about it. I saw an Alabama Power and then a Georgia Power truck. I knew once them good ole boys got to work up here, there would flat be some changes made.

I was right. About 3 hours after I saw those 2 trucks, my power came back on. I was without power for 4 days so I was very happy for it to come back on. The heat was off long enough for the entire building to get really cold so it has taken all night last night and prettymuch all day today for it to get back to a normal temperature inside. Now it's toasty warm and so I'll be able to sleep with my fan on.

I did have to do some repairs to a window sash to keep some of the cold air out. The other day, Kevin and Tracey noticed that the top sash of the window in my living room had about an inch open gap at the top. They had stuffed some towels in the gap to try to cut out some of the cold air. I found a nail in the window that had been put in by someone who had no idea how to use a hammer. The nail was bent about halfway down and it was obvious some doofus had worked on it. I removed that nail and put one in a better location. Now, that icy draft is gone.

My house guests really had no reason to stick around for the duration, so after a day of no power or heat, they quickly escaped to warmer climates and electrified conditions in Georgia. They surprised kin folks by showing up unannounced and stayed for a couple of days. Classes here were canceled through today so they made their way back up and arrived a few hours ago. Now we're all contemplating bed since Tracey and I have class tomorrow.

Tomorrow is my long day. I have 3 classes, convocation chapel service, and work tomorrow. It's probably going to be a really long and tiring day so I'd better not spend too much more time on here. I'll just let everyone know that things are getting back to some semblance of normalcy around here and we're going to be able to get the semester going again without too much interruption.

So, I've been here in Louisville for almost 7 months and I've gone multiple days without power on 2 separate and distinct times. So far, Louisville doesn't have such a good track record but I still like it here. It's adventurous, if nothing else.

Casey