charlieDEAN’S Blog

Well, I’m back…kind of.

I’ll admit…each sucessive kid has gotten more difficult (duh) and I find myself more tired.  Right now I have the remnets of a cold and I got just over 4 hours of coughing-deprived sleep last night…so it’s hard to think of clever, insightful, profound things to blog about.

So here’s your chance — what do you want me to blog about?  The more specific the question, the more likely I’ll answer.

Sorry for no posts as of late…it’ll probably be a week or two before I’m really posting again…

Things are crazy, as I’m sure you can imagine.  Actually Madox is probably the easiest Dean kid to deal with right now.  The first night we were home from the hospital, Jaxon had a 102 fever and was up about every hour crying.  The second night, it was Caleb’s turn to have a 101.5 fever.  Saturday night my mom took the two oldest boys (but Gavin was up coughing three or four times at her house), and when she brought them home on Sunday Gavin had a fever.  So everyone is coughing and snotty…and now, of course, Jennifer and I are starting to sniffle and cough.  So, we’re in pretty miserable shape!!

Madox is actually doing really well — he took a bottle at 9:30, then at 1:30am and finally at 4:30…and he slept between each feeding which isn’t too bad for a newborn (of course when he finished his bottle at about 5am, he was wide awake for an hour or so!

Dwight: And what’s the ratio of Stanley Nickels to Shrewt Bucks?

Stanley: The same as unicorns to leprichauns.

Jen was a trooper…Madox Logan Dean was born at 3:09pm…he was 9lbs, 3oz, & 20 inches long…yes, that’s a big boy!  You can see a couple pictures on my flicker account…just follow the link on the side bar…I’ll have better pictures up tomorrow night…just realized that I took pictures of everyone with the baby…except myself…that sucks, but I’ll get over it!

We chose the middle name Logan in honor of my cousin in Atlanta, who lost his wife to cancer on Sunday…her funeral started 9 minutes before Madox was born.

Jennifer’s doctor said that she thought Jennifer could “go” anytime this weekend…if she doesn’t go on her own (she never has before), she will be induced on Wednesday morning at 7am.

 I’ll keep ya posted!

One of the great things about living in Central Illinois, is morel season.  Yesterday, I came home from work early because Jennifer had a Dr. appt., and fried me up a plate of morels — delicious!  Yes, it was a fattening treat, but one you only get for about 2 weeks a year.

 (there are other mushrooms that look similar to morels that are poisonous, so ya have to be careful)

Tuesday night our small group had a guest join us.  He is one of the pastors at a church south of Decatur and he’s a prophet.  We had a really cool time, asking him lots of questions and then having him prophesy over people in our group as he felt led.  I don’t what what that does to your theology or how you process that, but let me take a second, and for those of you that don’t come from a background where prophecy is part of your experience, let me say a couple of things to put you at ease…

•  In 1 Corinthians 12, prophecy and hearing messages of wisdom and knowledge from God are listed as spiritual gifts.  It’s seems really disingenuous of cessationists to summarily dismiss certain spiritual gifts.  I grew up in this tradition, and I remember at college hearing the cessationist viewpoint, and even then thinking that it’s a really poor position.  (Ironically, these folks are the people who most often claim to take the Bible literally.)
• Prophets are not perfect.  They are fallen people just like you and me, who sometimes confuse their own thoughts with God’s.  I think what I’ve appreciated (and I appreciated about Rob the other night) is that the people that I’ve met who have the gift of prophesy are generally pretty humble about what they believe they hear God saying.  The only exception to that was a guy I encountered, who thought he was a prophet, but who — as best as I and some other “leadership types” at the church — didn’t really know what he was talking about.  So, instead of saying “thus saith the Lord,”; the prophets I’ve encountered have said, “I sense God saying this to you…does it resonate with what the Spirit is saying inside of you?”
• Prophecy is simply listening to the Holy Spirit on behalf of other people — asking God, “do you have something that you’d like to say for this person?”
• The purpose of prophecy is not to replace the Bible — in fact, the best prophecies I’ve received have led me back to the Bible.  The purpose of prophecy is to encourage people, to edify people and to reveal God’s heart to people.

There’s much more to be said…I’m hardly the authority or last word when it comes to this, but it’s some of the things that were rattling around my head today!

I got nothing…

In my opinion…worst episode of the season (maybe ever?)  I don’t think I laughed one time.  Maybe it will be funnier when I watch it a second time this weekend.  If you’ve got funny stuff, please post and change my mind.

A couple of thoughts after watching Kirk Cameron & Ray Comfort (The Way of the Master) debate the Rational Response Squad — avowed atheists.  The debate was aired on Nightline last night:

• What a crazy format — it was a debate, but Nightline only showed sound bytes, so it was hard to get a real sense of their arguments.
• It appeard the Cameron and Comfort were a little ruffled by the response of the crowd — while ABC made sure that the crowd was equal, it appeared that the atheistic side was much more vocal and passionate.
• Honestly, I just don’t get The Way of the Master guys — I know they mean well, but it’s as if they believe that all they have to do is give simplistic, cliched arguments and people are going to fall on their knees and repent.  I’m just not sure how “in touch” they are with how people think.
• Kirk Cameron seemed to have an axe to grind about creationism vs. evolution.  He tried to steer the debate towards that issue — no one followed.
• Who “won” the debate?  In my estimation, it was a draw…I’d give both parties a D+.  I don’t think anyone said anything new or really made arguments that are worth talking about here.
• One last thing — leading up to this “debate” Ray Comfort kept on promising people that he would “100% proved God’s existence using science.”  In reality, he used the teleological argument for the existence of God — which, in my opinion isn’t a bad argument — but not everyone is convinced.

Did anyone else watch it?  What did you think?