J.R. Lee – Pastor of Freedom Church and fellow ‘Canes fan
Todd Lollis – Executive Pastor of Freedom Church and overall swell guy
Blake Goss – Best Worship Pastor on the planet and soon to be daddy
Ian Schneider – Incredible graphics guy with a tough last name to spell correctly
Tyler Orr – Student Pastor extraordinare with a not so tough last name
Jeremy Thompson – lifelong friend and soon to be church planter
Megan Strange – new mommy and resident theologian of Freedom Church
Corey Tutor – all around good guy with cute kids
Steven Furtick – he will kick your butt with his words
Perry Noble – he will punch you in the gut with his words
Mike Linch – was my student pastor for about 3 months when i was in 6th grade
All Canes – the Miami Hurricanes blog. all Canes – all the time. just the way i like it

i don’t think Gary Lamb has ever been in front of Ed Young on anything, but apparently, Gary Lamb’s blog is rated higher than Young’s according to churchrelevance.com. to check out all 60 of the Top Rated Church blogs, click here.

well, there’s a couple of reasons. and no, it’s not because of this.

1. i ordered one of these a few weeks ago and it is getting shipped to me TODAY! what’s cool about this shirt is that i paid $20 for it and $10 of those dollars went to give a kid in Africa water for an entire year and another $5 of those dollars is going to Compassion International to help feed the hungry. plus, it’s a sweet lookin shirt!

2. i’m pretty pumped about going to see Fireproof tomorrow night with my bride-to-be. i would say 99% of the time i would not be this excited about a Kirk Cameron movie but this movie also stars one of my very good friends and another guy i know pretty well.

flashback to April: i wrote about it here.

do yourself a favor and go spend $9.50 and see it in the theater. then, come back here and tell me what you thought.

readyyyyyy….break!

friday night :: kick-off to the weekend. not really anything special planned – just getting pumped up for the next two days.

saturday :: my groomsmen are getting themselves fitted for their tuxes. we had a rousing good time last time we all were fitted for our tuxes for another wedding, so this should be fun.

Miami plays Texas A&M at 3:30. i’ve missed the ‘Canes since they were off last week and i’ve decided, i HATE bye weeks. i know the players love them but for fans, it is quite horrendous to go two weeks without watching your favorite team play.

UGA plays Arizona State at 8:00pm saturday night. after squeaking by South Carolina last week, the Dawgs need to step up their game as they travel west for the first time since Eisenhower was president. in that game, they played USC in front of only 25,000 fans because one of the first presidential debates on television was in the same time slot. go figure.

sunday morning :: FreedomChurch will continue the 2nd week of our series entitled “Jesus”. some of the attorneys i invited from work told me they were coming so i hope i see them on sunday morning. if they don’t show up, i’ll be sad until…

sunday night :: FREEDOM GENERATION IS HERE! finally, the long-awaited, much-anticipated FreedomChurch student ministry kicks off sunday night! i can’t wait to see all of the students show up on sunday night. we’re giving each of them a chance to win $1,000 or a Nintendo Wii. and if no body wins the Wii, i’ll take it for a wedding present.

2. (yeah, that was all #1) the Daniel fast continues. this morning, i went to open the refrigerator and my dad had cooked t-bone steaks last night. he doesn’t understand what he’s doing to me!

3. Callie and i have been to two pre-marital counseling sessions thus far and it’s going very well. we’re meeting with Pastor Moore from Allen Temple and he’s a great guy. he and his wife have been married 42 years which is quite an achievement.

4. everyone on staff is now twittering except Blake. oh, well maybe one day.

last night, Josh Hamilton hit 28 home runs in the first round of the Home Run Derby. yeah, twenty-freakin-eight home runs! and they weren’t just barely over the fence. he was hitting balls 500 feet! total, he hit 28 baseballs over 12,000 feet – that averages out to 428.6 feet per home run. and to give you a reference, deep-center in Yankee Stadium is 408 feet. his longest home run of the night was 512 feet.

while that is very impressive, Hamilton’s story is equally impressive. all night on the telecast they were hinting at his story. this guy was the first overall pick in the 1999 draft. however, he never saw playing time until 2007. Hamilton was addicted to crack and was in rehab eight different times before he got clean in October 2005. he discovered a relationship with God and loves to share his story with anyone who will hear it.

this guy has a great story and i’m glad that he can go on national television, put on a display of power like he did last night, and then turn around and give all the glory back to God.

this is an article from ESPN the Magazine from when Josh was a rookie in 2007. the story is told from his perspective and it is incredible. if you’ve got time today, please go read it.

anyway, the wedding was weird, to say the least. for starters, i had never met his bride-to-be until Friday afternoon. pretty crazy. secondly, instead of my dad being the best man (since he was the oldest son) my uncle was the best man and i was a groomsman – my dad skipped out on being in the wedding altogether! i’ve still got to figure out how to get him back for that. anyway, Callie went down with me and played the harp before the wedding got started in what we in the industry like to call a “prelude”. she did a great job and frankly, she stole the show. people were quiet and mesmerized Friday night when she started to practice. she wasn’t even doing her real stuff! she was PRACTICING!! she’s amazing.

flash forward to the wedding on Saturday. they strategically placed me directly behind the unity candle so when it was time for that, i had to take a step back. after they lit the candle, a song was sung which meant i had to stand there with my grandfather and his almost-wife stare into each others’ eyes while the song was being sung. very weird.

there were some other things that added to the weirdness but i don’t want to go into all of that stuff. and trust me, you don’t want me to either.

so, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to experience?

we could not come to a conclusion so i’m throwing it out (not up) to the blog world.

do you think Jesus ever thought about punching someone in the face? and if he did, is that a sin? not the actual punching someone in the face because that is causing bodily harm in a vengeful way against someone else and that is probably not a good idea – but just thinking, “man, I’d really like to punch this guy in the face.” maybe the punch-recipient was just a moron and said something stupid. maybe they didn’t get something Jesus was trying to say and the only thing that was going to resonate with them was a punch in the face. who knows? but would thinking about punching someone in the face be a sin? because if it’s a sin, we can rationalize that Jesus Christ never thought it because He would not and could not sin.

so, let the discussion begin…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILvkEHQPHHg&hl=en]

i’m not going to do that.

now i can always get that llama i’ve been dreaming of having!!

what tactics do you use to keep your finances under control?

THE UNI WATCH BLOG

i love Uni Watch. for those of you that haven’t experienced the Uni Watch yet, it is a blog devoted to the obsessive study of athletics aesthetics. basically, how professional athletes are dressed. you can read insider information about all types of logos and patches from history and today’s time. if someone has some sort of uni problem during a game, you can bet it will be on Uni Watch the next day. the content will make you appreciate all of the hard work that goes into getting the player’s clothes ready to play. there’s too much to say about it so i’ll just let you experience it. go ahead. try it.