The Gospel and The Kingdom

I think I have figured out how to capture my note for reading and for future recall. I love Gmail, mostly for its tagging abilities - it operates in a way in which I think. Which made me think about ways in which I may recall items that I read.

Here is how I did it…. Now that you can simply sign up for Gmail accounts without having to input a mobile phone number, I set up a free account with a deignated address regarding my reading quotes. I can now email a quote to this address with the title and author in the subject line. Then, once a week or so, I can go into this account and tag emails with certain tags (like, “illustration” “holiness” a specific doctrine or even a particular Bible passage). Then, when I am looking for something I read, I can use Gmail’s thorough search functions and my tagging system to easily find what I am looking for. THe good thing is that at 2.8 GB of storage space, I have plenty of room for plenty of quotes. I have not done this yet, but you can even upload .pdf articles or eBooks and tag them!

Try it out if you want - let me know what you think and how it works for you. Let me know if you tweak it in anyway, I might like it!

Update:
If you want a back up of your quotes, you can always enable POP3 access from within Gmail and install a POP3 client on your computer, if you do not already have one, and download them periodically. You will not have all your tags, but you will have all your quotes!

We had a wonderful weekend at Midlane Park Baptist. It was indeed wonderful to have all the visitors and family friends with us this past Sunday. I especially enjoyed our sunrise service. But I always begin to think, after Resurrection day has come and gone, “what do we do now?”

Well, we serve! If we really get down to it, the message of Easter, or Resurrection day, does two things. It draws believers closer to the God who has saved them and it calls unbelievers to repentance and demands a response from them. So our only two appropriate responses, depending on the category you are in from above, is either belief for servanthood.

So what do we do now? We put the gospel to our feet and we serve. We are told by Paul that it is the love of Christ that compels us, or controls us, as the ESV states it. But in what way does it control us, how does it compel us? It does so because we have concluded the message of Easter: that One, who was just, has died for the unjust. Are you compelled by the love of Christ?

Being controlled with each of you….

Here is another good quote on reading, this time from John Piper. I downloaded the free copy of Don’t Waste Your Life and was reading a bit of it this afternoon. In there, John Piper spoke of the influence that C.S. Lewis had, not only upon his life, but also upon his reading habits. Here is what he said….

He showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern.

This provides me great comfort for my inclination to read dead theologians!

I think everyone knows that I enjoy reading and that I often contemplate how I read so as to read better.  That said, Dr. Mohler has an excellent post today regarding the historian, David McCullough, and his thoughts on reading.  I trust that this article proves as useful and encouraging to you as it did to me.

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