Church With The Mogul #2

Ok, I'm finally taking the time to catch up on blogging a little bit. The quick update on life is that I'm now done with IOE and sitting reserve (basically being on call as a backup in case something happens like a pilot gets sick) here in Billings. Today I'm not on reserve, so I've decided to jumpseat down to Colorado Springs to have lunch with my grandma Mimi and then come back to Billings this evening. At the moment, I'm sitting at gate A1 in Billings at some ridiculous hour of the morning waiting for my flight to Denver.

Anyway, back onto topic: the second installment of my fledging Church With The Mogul series.

Almost two weeks ago (yeah, I'm behind), I listened to another Driscoll sermon on my Mogul because I wasn't able to go to church that morning. Later that day I was supposed to fly my first IOE trip, so I decided that I needed to buy a flight case to carry my required manuals, headset, etc in because I didn't really have anything to carry that stuff in (much less look professional doing so). The store that carried the case I needed was over 2.5 miles away, so the long walk there and back provided a convenient opportunity to listen as I walked (and it was a really amazing morning outside).

I started out turning my heart toward worship by listening to David Crowder's "Illuminate" album. I love that CD because the lyrics of their songs have so much depth and can consistently put me in a more worshipful mood even when my day isn't going so well. My favorite song on the album is "All Creatures, No. 2," their modernization of the classic hymn "All Creatures Of Our God And King" and is one of the best updates of an old hymn that I know of (staying faithful to the original song but also making it more modern stylistically). As a side note: while I was out on that walk I stopped and bought Crowder's latest album (Remedy, I think it's called) because Bob Mann loved it so much he demanded I get it. I still haven't listened to it all yet, but what I've heard so far is pretty good.

Quick update on what's going on in real time: I found out just as they were about to start boarding that the United flight was completely full (when I called United a half hour prior there was still room) and that even though I was first in line for the jumpseat, the guy behind me was with a company that code-shares with United, so he'd be able to bump me out of the seat. I ran (literally) down to the Big Sky gate where they'd just finished boarding 2590 (the flight that goes to Sheridan and then on to Denver) and was able to get on at the last possible minute. The bad news was that even though there was room on the first leg (to Sheridan, WY), the second leg of the flight was almost full, so I risked getting stranded in Sheridan. The good news is that I got lucky when we got to Sheridan and there was room for me on the second leg, so I'm presently sitting in 1A as we cruise towards Denver. I doubt I'll be able to make my original connection to Colorado Springs at 10 though, so I'll have to hope for the 11:20 and have a little less time with Mimi.

Back on topic:
When I got done with the Crowder album, I started my sermon for the day. After that really great sermon on idolatry I raved about in the first post of this series (because nobody left any comments about it, I'm guessing none of you listened to it, so let me take this opportunity to re-plug it as one of the best and most applicable sermons I've ever heard, so I strongly recommend you listen to it), I thought about going back and listening through his whole 1st Corinthians series, but I decided not to based on a recommendation from Fack. J.D. (aka, The Fack) was telling me a few days prior about how he's been listening through Driscoll's series on Proverbs and how much he'd been enjoying it because Fack's spent a lot of time in Proverbs and he thought Driscoll did a really good job with it.

The series is really long (I think over 30 or 40 sermons) and goes through the book topically because of how many passages have similar themes but aren't located next to each other. Not surprisingly, with that much material to cover, Driscoll felt the need to start off with a sermon that was essentially an introduction to the book and some of the overarching ideas before actually getting into Proverbs itself. It was this introduction that I listened to that morning.

Because it was an introduction rather than actually preaching out of a specific text, there wasn't as much that I got out of it as I would from a normal sermon, but it was still a worthwhile listen. Those of you who know me well know that I'd normally frown on not preaching out of a text, but I'm making an exception to that general rule in my mind because there's so much in our culture blocking our ability to understand Proverbs that I really think it was necessary in this case. That brings me to the biggest theme of the sermon that I remember, and that's about the difference between knowledge and wisdom (and how knowledge is so highly valued in our culture and wisdom isn't). One of the single biggest
reasons that he identifies is that our culture is so youth-focused (and is thus highly impatient) and knowledge can be acquired relatively quickly, as opposed to wisdom which takes a lot of time (and thus the wise typically aren't very youthful according to the viewpoint of the culture).

Anyway, like I said, I didn't get as much out of the introduction as I'd hoped, but I am looking forward to the rest of the Proverbs series (I'll probably listen to the next one tomorrow morning). It sounds like we're beginning our descent into Denver, so I think I'll call this post done and focus on making my connection (don't worry, I won't email this post in to Blogger until we're back on the ground). Please pray that the rest of my travels go well today and that I'm able to make it back to Billings tonight after seeing Mimi.