Chuck Musselwhite's Blog

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So I've been reading through 1 & 2 Kings and about the Prophets Elijha and Elisha. These are two men who were in touch with God. Elijha had his epic duel with the prophets of baal. Elisha raised people from the dead. While these stories always amaze me what gets to me the most is the fact that they were so in tune with God.
Anytime someone would seek God's direction on a matter such as war they knew the answer right then. In fact they often knew beforehand. To be in that place obviously takes a special annointing by God but it goes so much further than that. You never read that they were disobedient to God in some matter. They were pure and holy in His sight.
Their example convicts me to be closer to Him. I want to know God's leading not only for me and my family but also for those who seek it also. This necessitates me tearing down idols such as TV but also making the time to dwell in His presence.

Pastor was on fire this morning. In fact the whole second service was on fire. Worship went well, God gave Jen a scripture so I shared it with the whole congregation, and the mood of the people was one of expectation regardless of the time change. Pastor is going through Judges and the story of Gideon. This morning he shared about the importance of tearing down the idols in our life. This is all possible because the presence of God is present in our lives. The Spirt of the Lord came upon Gideon and he went and tore down the altar to Baal in his father's courtyard. When the presence of God is upon us we tear the idols in our life.

The scripture that God gave Jen was Psalm 24 which says God is with those who's hands are clean and hearts are pure. That comes about by seeking the Lord. It is cool how God ties everything in because Jen didn't know what Pastor was speaking on and yet God used both to edify the body. I came away with the siple thought that I need to seek the Lord and allow the presence of God to ove on me to tear down the altars in my mind.

I like to read other pastor's blog. There is one pastor's blog that I check out on a frequent basis. His name is Mark Battleson and he is the pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C.. He took over the church in 96 with only 17 people. Today they have 800 people who meet in three locations with five services. What makes this so cool is that eighty percent of the congregation are twenty something singles working in the captial. This is a tough place to minister and he is reaching the toughest age group.
They just opened a coffee house in the busiest part of D.C. called Union Station. Two and a half million people walk by their front door every year. God has positioned them to reach the masses by planting them right in the middle of the marketplace. Each day they have ourtreach going on in the coffee house, plus their church offices are upstairs, and on the Saturday nights they have services.
One thing I didn't mention was that they meet in movie theatres for Sunday services. One theatre is across the street from the coffee house and another is in a section of town close by. They have spawned this push by movie theatres to get churches to use theaters as meeting places.
If you want to check out his blog you can go to www.evotional.com of his church website at www.theaterchurch.com.

I was reading 1 Kings this week and the story of Elijha came up. God really spoke to me through this. Elijha challenges the prophets of Baal to a God contest. They would both prepare sacrifices and the God who lit the fire on the altar would be the true God. Well Elijha's (and ours) God wins and the prophets of Baal are executed much to the dismay of Jezebeel the kings wife.
She threatens to kill him in the next twenty-four hours so Elijha flees. After he is done running God asks Elijha what he was doing there? Or beeter yet why would you run when you have Me on your side? After that God takes Elijha to Mt Sinai. On the mountain God brings a storm, earthquake, and then fire. Then God speaks in a soft voice to Elijha.

What I took from that is that Satan often attacks us after a spiritual success. Elijha just had victory over four hundred prophets when Jezebeel threatens him. Satan was trying to neutralize Elijha's ministry and he will attempt to do it to us as well. We may go through a spiritual storm, our world maybe rocked, and the heat may seem like it is being turned up in our lives. We need to hang on because the soft still voice of God will follow and we need to be ready to listen (usually by then we are).
An interesting factoid about this story. The whole battle was over rain. Whose God could bring it. After the sacrifice God brings rain so much so that everyone has to race down the mountain to escape flooding. God gives Elijha supernatural power to run faster that King Ahab's chariot. Pretty cool huh?

When we started preparing for parenthood people told us a lot of things; loss of sleep, dirty diapers, and toys everywhere, but no one ever told us about those hidden smells that smack you in the face. Our van had this funky smell in it this week. It totally smelt of kid but we couldn't find it. I even cleaned out the van today and vacuumned it, which you won't be able tonotice tomorrow. The source of the smell was never discovered. It didn't help that it rained most of the week so the windows had to be up.

Last night we got in the van to go to a family party and the smell just attacked us as we got in. It smelt like half kid half left over food from kid. We couldn't put a finger on the distinct smell but it was definitely there. We searched and searched but there was about four inches of stuff covering the van floor from all of the sweat shirts, jackets, toys, baby wipes, and diapers floating around in there. I guess we will never know the what caused the smell.

I have spared most of you so far with endless UCLA promotion. I have kept it to myself partly because I am suprised and partly because I don't want to jinx them. They have had a great run so far and I am pretty confident that it will continue. Nobody is picking them to even win their next game and that is how I like it. The experts have been so wrong this year that it has made the tournament that much more enjoyable. People didn't even pick UCLA to get out of the second round and here they are in the final four.

So my plans are to sit back and watch the games with my good friends and pray that the 12th banner will be hung in Pauley Pavillion.

We were brave enough to enter Toys r Us with both kids this morning. The mission was to check out some Thomas the train stuff and get Allie a couple or pacifiers. Well everything went well until Allie took a header off a chair on to the tile. She was standing leaning against the chair and lost her balance and fell right on her nose and mouth. She got a big fat upper lip and a little blood came out. It was one of those weird things which happened so fast but while she was falling it was in slow motion and Jen and I couldn't move fast enough to catch her. She was alright in about thirty seconds and wanted to get back down and play with her brother. Let's just say that both of the kids inherited their grace and balance from their father.

We then decided to add to our experience by going to the park. We spent a half an hour fretting nervously whether Caleb was going to fall off of the jungle gym. He decided he was too big to go on the small gym and therefore wanted to go on the big kids gym. The problem with that is that he doesn't pay attention and if he falls it is much more catastrophic. Fortunately we avoided any of that and he had a great time.

Finally we went to Round Table Pizza for lunch which has a playground also. Caleb spent the rest of his energy going up and down the apparatus. When lunch came he was determined to consume half of my pizza. It became a race to see who could eat the most in the shortest time. I think I won in the beginning but right now I am hating life. Maybe I should've ordered one more personal pizza. Now I am exhausted and I still have to go to work. I guess I survived...?

Here I am riding a Trike for our preschool here at CCSM. They were doing a fundraiser for supplies and you can still sponosr me, just let me know.

Wow! Mama Mia is Swedish for Oh My Gosh! We were amazed at the musical last night. The first half we were on the edge of our seat bent over from laughing. The second half we were on the edge to see how it was going to turn out.

I didn't even know that it was based on the music of ABBA? They did a great job interweaving all of their past hits into this story of a daughter looking for her real dad. The Mom and daughter have these incredible voices and the music just sweeps you up where you look at you watch and can't believe the time.

I am glad we did it for Jen's birthday. It was a very special night and we had a blast.