[Hat Tip: The Rabbit Room]

... though I've never met them.

1. C.S. Lewis. I feel like the man is my brother. When I read his work, I'm mentally transferred to the man's family room, pipe in hand, shoes kicked off, ready to bask in his intelligent warmth. I truly feel love for Lewis -- a strange, beautiful feeling.

2. John Piper. Here's another man who I love dearly, though I've only known him through his sermons and writings. If Lewis is like a brother to me, Piper is like a father. His wisdom resonates through my soul, and his prophetic voice convicts me and forces me to cheer, because the world -- especially the Christian world -- needs prophets like John Piper.

3. Bono. I dare say he's the greatest poet of his generation. His voice, mind, and pen have provided the soundtrack for my life. He's not a moral giant and he's not a preacher, but in his own realm his voice is prophetic. I love him like a brother, and hope to meet him one day.

For all of the men mentioned above, the feeling I have for them really is love. That's what makes them more than just, in my mind, good writers, preachers, or musicians. They're like dear friends.

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before . . . Enjoy.

Great post over at the Rabbit Room by Andrew Peterson. A snippet, below.

I didn’t grow up paying much attention to Christian music, but it’s hard not to know who Steven is. At some point, most of us have heard his music, whether it was someone singing “I Will Be Here” at a wedding, or a duo covering “Listen to Our Hearts” at church, or cranking “The Great Adventure” when it came on the radio. He’s had more number one singles and more Dove Awards than any other Christian artist, which is truly remarkable, whatever you may think of those kinds of stats.

And yet, though everyone seems to know him, I’ve never heard a single negative story about the guy. I’ve been in Nashville for 15 years now, and, well, you tend to hear less-than-flattering stories about folks from time to time (I’m sure there are a few about me floating around out there), but I have yet to hear one of those about Steven. What that might lead a rascal like me to conclude is that either a) Steven is so squeaky-clean he must be hard to like or b) he’s a complete wreck and he’s hiding it. I didn’t realize until this tour was underway that there’s a third option. Here it is: Steven is a wreck, he’s not hiding it, and because of the mighty presence of Jesus in his life, grace abounds to those around him.

It’s the great, confounding reversal of the Gospel of Jesus. If the word we preach is one of attainable perfection, of law, of justification by works, then when we fail, our testimony fails with it. But if we preach our deep brokenness and Christ’s deeper healing, if we preach our inability to take a single breath but for God’s grace, then our weakness exalts him and we’re functioning as we were meant to since the foundation of the world. Steven isn’t super-human. He’s just human. But what a glorious thing to be! An attempt on our part to be super-human will result only in our in-humanness–like a teacup trying to be a fork: useless. But if the teacup will just be a teacup, it will be filled. Humans were made (as was everything under the sun) for the glory of the Maker. Why should we try to be anything but fully human? Let God fill us up and pour us out; let him do what he will, let us be what we were meant to be. That gives us the freedom to sing about what’s really happening in our hearts without being afraid of sullying the good name of God. If our hearts are contending with the forces of darkness, clinging desperately to the hope of a Savior, then to sing boldly about the battle is no shame to us and all glory to our King.

The proof is in the pudding. Everyone I know in Nashville who knows Steven has said to me something like, “I love Steven. He’s a good man.” But from the first week of the tour I discovered that Steven isn’t a good man. He’s as sinful as the rest of us. He wears his weakness on his sleeve. He’s quick to share his pain and his struggle. That doesn’t make him mopey–he’s quick to share his joy, too. But what’s so wonderfully subversive about the Gospel is that our ability to honestly bear our grief and woundedness just makes room for God’s grace to cast light on all that shadow; it makes room for us to love each other. When we encounter that kind of grace we come away remembering not just the sin but, overwhelmingly, the goodness, and the grace, and we say, “I love that guy. He’s a good man.” What we’re really saying is, “I love that guy. God is so good.”

He goes on to describe how Steven deals with the accidental death of his daughter, and the great hope that we have in the gospel. Wonderful post, I recommend you read the whole thing.

Two years ago when our church transitioned to a blended worship service, we learned a new/old song entitled, "Before the Throne of God above." It's been covered by quite a few contemporary artists, and I suspect that it's probably been sung at your church.

I haven't been able to figure out who reworked it and reintroduced it to the contemporary christian community. Originally it was written by Charitie Lees Smith in 1863. She originally entitled it "The Advocate".

Here's the original lyrics:

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great High Priest whose name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in Heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Saviour died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

Behold Him there the risen Lamb,
My perfect spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I AM,
The King of glory and of grace,
One in Himself I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by His blood,
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Saviour and my God!

Here's my question: What does this line mean:

"One in Himself I cannot die"

Does anybody have any idea? I am strongly of the conviction that we should understand what we sing (Which is why I explain the term "ebeneezer" every time we sing "Come, Thy Fount of Every Blessing")

So when we sang this in church the other day, I realized I didn't understand it, and I'm the pastor!?!

Here are my theories:
1. Because I am united with Christ I am identified with him and his righteousness is now mine. This is certainly a Biblical concept and 3 final lines following the line in question seems to support this interpretation.

However the use of the term "himself" is really throwing me. Shouldn't the line be "One in him" or "one with him" or "Joined with him"? I don't remember my English Grammar, but if Interpretation #1 is correct, is "himself" the right form of the 3rd person singular? The use of "himself" leads me to wonder if the whole line is about God only. So being "one in himself" is a reference to the unity of the trinity, or of the Father and the Son. (I and the Father are one.) So in that case, another interpretation would be:

2. Because the Triune Godhead is in harmony with himself, One God, three persons, and therefore unchangeable and immutable, and because God the son does the will of God the Father, the writer, the human Christian has eternal life. So in this interpretation, there is almost two clauses - "Because he is one in purpose and divinity, I have been forgiven and have eternal life.) The 4 lines ABOVE the line in question seem to lend themselves to this interpretation.

See what I'm saying? The lines above the confusing line seem to support interpretation 2, and the lines below the confusing line seem to support interpretation 1.

I'm wondering now if the author meant both. Is the line vague and obscure on purpose. No other line in the song is so hard to interpret. The other lines seem to be pretty straightforward to anyone familiar with Christian doctrine.

My music minister and I discussed changing the lines in keeping with the original author's intent in order for our people to understand what they are singing. If we really believe that theology matters in our worship music, then it seems to me not to be right to let people sing a line that doesn't make sense.

So we came up with three alternative lines:

1- Our Spirits joined, I cannot die
2- One with Himself I cannot die (changing the preposition only)
3-Now we are one I cannot die

I like the third one best, I think it's clearer and follows the authors intent if interpretation #1 is correct. But I still don't know if the author was talking about the unity of the Godhead or the unity of the believer and Christ.

The advantage to the second alternative lyric above is that it maintains some of the original ambiguity of the author, and so either interpretation is still possible. But I still can't figure why the author used "himself" unless that was just poetic license to get the right number of syllables.

What do you think?

1- What do you think the line means?
2- How would you rewrite the lyric?
3- What do you think, in general, about rewriting old hymn lyrics?

The quote below is a great follow-up to this earlier post. I lifted this entirely from Jared's blog.

Self-denying humility ought to show up in the way we worship together. Thankfully, we don't hear as much these days about worship wars in Christian churches as we did just a few years ago, but they are still there. For years I thought this phenomenon was the bane of the "make it up as you go along" whirl of low-church evangelical Protestantism, and mostly it is. But even with a set traditional liturgy, Roman Catholics and other groups often experience the same kinds of tensions.

Maybe you're like me, reared to have the worship music tastes of a seventy-five-year-old woman. That's because, I think, a seventy-five-year-old woman was picking out the hymns and gospel songs in the church where I grew up. I tear up when I sing "Just As I Am" or "To God Be the Glory." And I'm left cold by what some people call the "majestic old hymns." They sound like what watercress-sandwich-eating Episcopalians from Connecticut would listen to (not that there's anything wrong with that). And so many of the contemporary songs sound as if they were written by commercial jingle writers, trying desperately to find words to rhyme with "Jesus" ("Sees us?" "Never leave us?" "Diseases?"). I'm not saying aesthetics don't matter in worship. Worship is, after all, commanded to be offered with "reverence and awe" (Heb. 12:28). I am saying our varying critiques of musical forms are often just simple narcissism disguised as concern about theological and liturgical downgrade.

We need more worship wars, not fewer. What if the war looked like this in your congregation—the young singles petitioning the church to play more of the old classics for the sake of the elderly people, and the elderly people calling on the leadership to contemporize for the sake of the young new believers? This would signal a counting of others as more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3), which comes from the Spirit of the humiliated, exalted King, Christ (Phil. 2:5-11).

When I insist that the rest of the congregation serve as backup singers in my own little nostalgic hit parade of back-home Mississippi hymns, I am worshiping in the spirit all right, but not the Holy Spirit. I am worshiping myself, in the spirit of self-exaltation. The church negates the power of the third temptation when we remind ourselves that we all have this devilish tendency and cast it aside whether in worship planning or missions or budget decisions.

-- Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried (Crossway, 2011), 149-150.

Yes.

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10 ESV)

From Think Theologically: How to worship when you think the songs suck. Some excerpts, below:

And that my friend, brings us to the point. “How do I worship when I think the songs suck?” you might ask. Well first off, you don’t express that you think the songs suck to anyone else. You may ruin a genuine worshipful experience for them by your complaining. While they were perfectly fine worshipping to that particular song, your comments could forever taint it for them. You are certainly free to mentally critique the artistic and theological merits of the songs you sing each Sunday. But when you decide one or more are duds, don’t rain on everyone else’s parade.

The church has enough people complaining about enough things.

Yes.

I am guilty of ruining songs for other people. And I'm not talking about songs that have bad theology. I'm talking about songs that don't float my boat, or have an emphasis problem or metaphorical turn that I find slightly troubling.

I hadn't thought of it this way: I may be ruining a worship experience for someone else when I do that. I may be stealing worship from God, and replacing it with confusion or cynicism.

This still leaves the question though of “how do I worship when I think the songs suck?” The answer, in short, is that the worship set wasn’t picked for you, and part of being in community of believers gathered to worship is forfeiting your preferences in deference to others. A prime example of this is theologian John Frame. While a classically trained organist who doesn’t like contemporary worship music, Frame nonetheless argues for its legitimate place in worship services. I’m sure he might cringe as well at some of the current praise choruses that are popular out there, but out of love for his brothers and sisters in Christ, he lays down his preferences and worships alongside those who sing songs he might not particularly like.

I think this is the ultimate answer to the question. When you think the songs suck, you can still, and should still worship God as fervently and freely as you would when its your absolute favorite song being sung. You may however need to mortify your critical spirit and get over yourself first, but you should still strive to worship God through song each Sunday whether you particularly like the selections or not.

Jesus didn’t die on the cross so you could sing your favorite songs every Sunday. He died so that you might learn to die to self as well. Part of doing that might just be singing songs you don’t like, and singing them as genuinely as the songs you do.

Amen.

[H/T Parchment and Pen]

Caught in the mom-wagon? Make your drive instantly bad-action with any of these fifteen songs. You can't not feel cool driving to these tunes.

1. "Trouble Man" by Marvin Gaye

2. "Midnight Rider" by Allman Brothers Band*

3. "The Letter" by Joe Cocker

4. "Low Rider" by War

5. "Call Me The Breeze" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

6. "La Grange" by ZZ Top

7. "E-Pro" by Beck

8. "Super Bad, Parts 1 and 2" by James Brown

9. "Repo Man" by Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs

10. "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" by Michael Jackson**

11. "1999" by Prince

12. "American Girl" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

13. "Whole Lotta Lovin'" by Led Zeppelin

14. "Blitzkrieg Bop" by The Ramones

15. "Pride and Joy" by Stevie Ray Vaughn

Pop 'em in, crank it up, and rock out with your Crocs out.

Any recommendations you can make? What songs bad-action up your ride?



* Willie Nelson's version of this song works equally well.
** Will also accept "Billie Jean" as an alternative.

Tonight I was searching for something on my solo blogsite and skimmed a number of old posts, most of them written during a particularly introspective period a few years ago. At the time I didn't know who I was writing for, because no one really has ever read that space, so I'm wondering if maybe I was writing for future self to read. I was able to put words together back then.

All is well, but the words aren't flowing as easily anymore. They are swallowed up in busyness and distractions. All for good causes, I believe, but I long for simplicity.

And for no other reason than that, and because YouTube is the last refuge of the "I Got Nuthin'" blogger, I give you this simple Zooey Deschanel goodness. It's a rare doldrummed spirit that can't be lifted by a ukelele and two part harmony.



Jesus loves you, and everything is going to be set right.

Good night.

[H/T Althouse]

Have you heard of Gungor? Gungor is a Christian band (or, if that bugs you, a band that happens to be Christian :-) that has put together some pretty good music over the past few years. I'm not that familiar with them, but our College and Young Singles ministry contains some young people who are huge fans. I've heard that their concerts are great worship experiences. We've even used some of their songs for our before-teaching worship on Sunday mornings and at our homegroup on Friday nights.

Gungor has a new album out called Ghosts Upon The Earth. Our friend Quaid pointed me to the blog post in which Michael Gungor and his wife Lisa describe the album.

Now, before I excerpt part of it, I have to come clean: while I consider myself fairly current and I have a taste for newer music, if you're under the age of 25 or so, I could be your dad. So keep that in mind. I'm not exactly a hepcat. Plus, I admit that I've had this little yellow warning light going off on my discernment panel in my inner control room for awhile when it comes to Gungor. It's not a siren, just a small warning that now and then goes beeeep. One concern I have is that, while their music is great, I haven't been able to detect a clear Christology in it. That's for what I've listened to, which is certainly not their whole catalog. Of course, I could be wrong. I've been wrong plenty in my lifetime.

So, with that said, I'd be interested in your thoughts on Michael Gungor's notes about his song "Wake Up Sleeper".

This song puts music to that side of Jesus’ message. When Jesus spoke most of his nice, comforting words like “blessed are the poor”… or “don’t worry about tomorrow”, etc., he was primarily talking to a group of people on the underside of power. He was talking to the poor. To those who had fallen short in their weaknesses, Jesus said things like “neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”

But he wasn’t always so gracious toward those with power and religious authority. He would say “Woe to you Pharisees…you whitewashed tombs…you brood of vipers” and so on. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day worshiped a religious system, a book, or a law more than they did the very Spirit of God. They worshiped their own place and thoughts and understandings of God rather than simply worshiping God. This seemed to infuriate Jesus.

In my opinion, this hasn’t changed much. Much of the Christian world right now worships the Bible more than it worships God. If you go to the website of a typical protestant, evangelical church right now, there’s a good chance that under the belief section you will come across the Bible before you come across any language about Jesus. You will probably find more theology about what you need to do to go to Heaven than you will about following the teachings of Jesus, or the Kingdom of God, or anything like that.

I feel like much of modern American Christianity should actually change its name to something else, maybe something like Bible-anity. As a whole, we’re rich, we’re arrogant, we’re judgmental and we’re dead inside. Sounds like the Pharisees to me.

This song is a call to repentance, a call to wake up. It’s an invitation to join the poor and the sinner and the broken once again that we may come alive and join with God again.

[Emphasis mine]

So, what do you think of that? Should most of us drop the Christian tag and start calling ourselves "Bible-ians"?

I have to admit this troubles me. I'm wanting to cross-check my opinion on this with some of you. Let me acknowledge first that there is probably some truth to his point. But is it accurate?

For what it's worth, I went to my church's website to see our statement of belief. The first three paragraphs deal with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, before paragraph four, which deals with the Bible. And we're fairly conservative, evangelical and protestant. So maybe we're an outlier?

Secondly, I read every lyric of the new album. There isn't a mention of Jesus anywhere, or much of anything that couldn't be sung in a Unitarian church, even though the whole album deals with spiritual themes. Now, of course, just because you are a Christian and you make music doesn't mean you have to sing about Jesus in every song, or in any song. But if you're going to scold others for not mentioning Jesus prominently enough on their websites . . .

Thirdly, trust me, I know that there are plenty of problems in the American church. But I've never thought that one of them is that we pay too much attention to the Bible.

Finally, I get spooked when people begin talking about the Bible like it's something that is getting between a person and God, especially when it's so easy to create a false god for oneself when sailing the windblown seas without the Bible for a rudder.

I am interested in your thoughts on this, so if you have any, especially if you are a Gungor fan, please leave them in the comments. Thanks.

EW's Owen Gleiberman reports:

I went to a showing of From the Sky Down, a documentary about U2 directed by Davis Guggen- heim, with more or less one thought in my head: Do I really need to see another U2 documentary? . . . I would probably have skipped the film entirely were it not for the fact that I’ve greatly enjoyed Davis Guggenheim’s work — An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and Waiting for “Superman” (2010), and also, maybe especially, It Might Get Loud (2008), his marvelous ode to rock & roll guitarists. (If you’ve never seen it, you really should.)

I’m glad I listened to my instincts. From the Sky Down looks back at U2′s career through the lens of the band’s single most dramatic transformational moment: the recording of Achtung Baby in 1990-91. Sure, I already knew that that album — a great one — marked U2′s early-’90s reinvention of itself into, ironically enough, a “rock band.” (That’s when Bono started to wear sunglasses, and also when they exchanged the thumping drive of their rhythms for dance grooves, industrial-funk grooves, soft-rock grooves. Simply put, it was when they started to groove.) But From the Sky Down captures how a moment like that one doesn’t just happen. The band members didn’t simply wake up one day and look at each other and say, “Hey, dudes, let’s rebrand!” In fact, Bono and the Edge, by the end of the ’80s, knew that they had pushed their politics, their sound, their stoic po-faced album covers, their indie-band-gone-arena-rock mode as far as it could go, and that they couldn’t just keep doing it anymore.

But what to do instead? From the Sky Down, without being at all overblown about it, presents the recording of Achtung Baby as a moment when the band was trying, in essence, to get from one side of a canyon to another, only they weren’t at all sure that there was a bridge they could walk across, because only the album they hadn’t made yet could be that bridge . . .

The movie is startlingly intimate — and honest — about the fears, the personal and musical tensions, the artistic chaos, the grinding work and discovery that went into the recording of Achtung Baby. It is, quite simply, one of the most transcendent close-up looks at the process of creating rock & roll I’ve ever seen.

I know U2 purists disagree with me, but I think Achtung Baby is their best album, and it's certainly one of the ten best albums by anybody in the last 20 years. Looking forward to the doc.

This is an extra cut from U2's Slane Castle DVD (circa 2001, I think). As an extra, it's a rough edit, but I love this version of "Mysterious Ways," as Bono is joined by his daughter on stage. My favorite part is around 4:20, when he hugs her while he's humming. Love it.

Paul Simon has been making great music for a long, long time. I saw this intriguing review of his new album So Beautiful or So What on The Rabbit Room that you might find interesting. It certainly piqued my interest in the album.

Here's one of the songs: Getting Ready for Christmas Day. Loved this one.

In case you have no idea what this is about, here is the original version of the song that caused all the hooplah. It's amazing how songs can be redeemed.

Just like lives.

It looks like U2's mammoth 360 Tour will close up shop in July. Where does U2 go from here? My brother and I kicked around a few ideas over lunch today, and hopefully with a little luck U2's manager, Paul McGuinness, will read this post (I'm pretty sure he has Thinklings on his reader) and implement our ideas. Here's what U2 should do:

- Within 12 months of shutting down the 360 Tour, they should release a low-key, stripped down album. Nothing too crazy.

- Within 18 months of shutting down the 360 Tour, they should embark on a worldwide arena tour where they would play maybe four or five songs from the new album, two or three anthems ("Streets" and "One" being two of the three), and the rest of the songs should be hardcore U2 fan favorites, of which there are many to choose from, like "Acrobat," "Angel of Harlem," "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," "Breath," etc. The idea behind this tour is it would be a fan's tour, bolstered by the intimacy of arenas.

- Within 36 months of shutting down the 360 Tour, the new tour should be shut down and U2 should take a break for six months, regroup, and then start working on another mega-album in the vein of The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, or even All That You Can't Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. I know it's practically impossible to force the production of a great album, but they should take at least 18 to 24 months and make it happen.

- Within 60 months of shutting down the 360 Tour, U2 should release the new, aforementioned album. It will change the world.

- Within 66 months of shutting down the 360 Tour, U2 should embark on their last enormous, worldwide stadium tour. The tour should last two to two-and-a-half years. It'll be the last great U2 stadium tour; everything after this tour should be done in arenas. By the time this tour ends, members of U2 will be pushing 60 years old, and they'll once again need to musically reinvent themselves, assuming they want to continue making music until they die (I'll bet that's at least Bono's plan).

There you go, Paul. No need to thank me.

Actually, I don't know the kid, so I don't not like him as a person. But as a counterpoint to Shrode's previous adoring tribute to Bieber's towering greatness, I offer this borrowed post from my brother, honorary Thinkling Stroke:

just hear me out. i'm not hating on bieber in the sense of "i hate his music and teeny-bopper culture." i don't have strong issues with those who are fans of his, really, either. what i don't like (and i'm not calling shrode out on this, i'm just reminded of it by his post) is people trying to tout bieber as a good Christian influence amidst a sin-filled environment. (from what i read, shrode was hopeful that bieber could stand for something other than the world and that bieber came from a faithful family that he was rooting for to direct justin in the right direction.)

this has probably been addressed at stuff Christians like, but i know that Christians like to root for famous/successful Christians. heck, i praised tony dungy and kurt warner on this very blog for the confusing contentment they've demonstrated in their post-nfl lives.

on a minor level, the danger here is promoting a celebrity as Christian in such a way that they become models in the faith when they shouldn't be. on a an extreme level, the danger is following a "Christian" celebrity so that we can label our idol worship as something much more tame, like "support."

back to what spurred this line of thinking... in the thinklings post referenced above, bieber's faith-walk was wondered about and certain evidences were given in hopes that he might be a believer who is working hard at keeping his nose clean and sending out good clean, positive vibes. (i really hope i'm not misstating or misquoting anyone.)

in the comments, someone mentioned that bieber's rolling stone cover was already a sign that he was headed for or already on a slippery slope. i went looking for said photo because i had seen things of bieber on SNL that already concerned me. i really didn't think he was a Christian role model, anyway, based on the fact that he's a secular artist. shamefully, it's the cynic in me that doubts a believer who is serious about their faith can really be wildly successful in the entertainment industry.* to me, you have to sell out to some extent to be THAT successful. at the very least they aren't characterized by their faith in Christ. i could be wrong. please remind me of examples where i am.

anyway, what i found on rolling stone's site was not the cover photo in question, but a picture of bieber flipping the bird to some paparazzo. granted, this does not mean he isn't a believer. but it is evidence that we should be extremely careful in promoting any human as a role model who isn't characterized by imitating Christ.

i don't doubt that bieber is talented. i don't doubt that his music is positive. i don't doubt that he's a generally good kid. BUT what that all adds up to is as eternally significant as charlie sheen's recent tirades. beyond that, it might even be more dangerous than sheen's "words of wisdom" because bieber is safe, cuddly and encouraging. sadly, anything short of Christ just makes for a safe, cuddled and encouraged journey to hell (unless you side with rob bell (oooooh, booyah, didn't see THAT coming did you? obligatory rob bell reference: check.)) basically, #tigerblood is just as God glorifying as #bieberfever.

so, to sum up: i don't mind if you're a bieber fan. i really don't. shoot, continue to pray for him, hope he stays out of trouble, etc. but please don't try to champion him as a Christian role model or put him on a pedestal. it's ok to enjoy secular music, really it is. as long as we don't glory in it and don't idolize those who represent it. and whatever we do, we dare not label it as "Christian" so we can embrace, stomach and parade our worship of anything/anyone other than Christ.

looking for role models? look for this attitude: "Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ." 1 Corinthians 11:1

wondering what to worship/promote: "Some boast in chariots and some in horses, But we will boast in the name of the LORD, our God." Psalm 20:7

"But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6:14




*i believe pro athletes are different because their profession/success is based more on their athletic ability than their image or message/brand.

I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but it's awesome so here you go: