So, to honor our birthday’s, I thought we’d do a “birthday cake” edition of Sunday Sustenance.

Some of these are ridiculous! All of these cakes are made out of sugar, flour and sweets.

If you’d like to know how to make the R2D2 cake. Check that out here.

Enjoy!

Putting Up The Christmas Tree from Brent Hodge on Vimeo.

RSS Readers, click through if you don’t see the video…

Voicemail, however, can drive me nuts! I find myself needing to deal with it right away. Depending on the phone you own. There is either a flashing light or a beep that doesn’t go away until you listen to or erase your voicemail. Once I started using the iPhone, most of my worries went away. The visual voicemail system on the iPhone is brilliant. Deal with it when I want. Refer back to it over and over and pick and choose which messages I want to listen to. No menus, waiting through messages or accidental deletions.

I thought I was set…until now!

Enter Spinvox. My buddy Matt Singley was giving away free subscriptions to Spinvox for being a Twitter friend. Needless to say, I was entered in the drawing and walked away with one of the subscriptions.

So what is Spinvox? Simply put, it’s voice to text. In other words, it takes my voicemails, transcribes them and sends me a text version. No dealing with flashing lights, or annoying beeps. No dealing with menus or wading through messages. Instead, all of that, is replaced with neat, efficiant text copies of my voicemails. I love it!!!

I now recieve my voicemails in email and text. Once a voicemail is recieved, it took less than a minute to recieve a text on my phone and about 2 minutes to recieve an email copy of the voicemail. This is awesome! I use Google email and using a filter has now made this even more beautiful.

So how can you get into Spinvox? It’s easy. Check out Spinvox on the web. Sign up. Setup. And, your done! Setup literally took me about 2 minutes. The sign up process is easy and painless. And the cost? A couple of cups of coffee per a month.

So, if you are interested. Head right now to Spinvox and sign up for a trial. Give it a shot. You will love it I am sure! If you try it out. Let me know what you think.

feeling or expressing gratitude;

I wanted to see what the meaning of thankful was. I was pleasantly surprised. It’s all about gratitude. So what is gratitude?

The state of being grateful; warm and friendly feeling toward a benefactor; kindness awakened by a favor received;

Wow, that’s good. A state of being grateful for something that’s been given to you. Put’s it into a beautiful perspective for me. God’s gift, IS the reason I can be thankful this season. Even if I’ve received nothing but His gift of life, I’ve received everything I need to be thankful.

So, without a gift, there is no gratitude. Without gratitude, there is no thankfulness.

Are you thankful this Thanksgiving?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our focus was on the future. He is going through some big stuff in life and I was hoping to be an encouragement. But I realized as we talked that I needed to hear what I had to say, as much as he did.

I grew up being good at many things. But I never excelled at one thing. That has always bugged me. I’ve always wanted to be great at something.

As we talked, I was reminded of the Parable of the talents, Matthew 25:13-30.Matthew 25:13-30. (ESV)Close

I was reminded how important it is to be stewards of what God has placed in our hands. It is not enough to own it. We need to take it to the next level. In being faithful with little things, God will find us as able to be faithful in things that are even greater, Luke 16:10.Luke 16:10. (ESV)Close

I was also reminded that in our weakness, He is strong, 2 Corinthians 12:9.2 Corinthians 12:9. (ESV)Close

If I am trying to fix something about my life, I have given God, no room to prove His power. I’ve basically shut Him out. It is only when I step out of the way, that God’s plan for me exists.

So, now the opportunity to take what I know and what I need to know and lay it all at His feet, to teach me, in His time. I can’t truly be faithful with what He has entrusted me, unless He teaches me how to care for it. And I can’t be taught by Him, if I am attempting to learn for myself.

So, something a bit different. The first week we focused on The Hamburger Fatty Melt. I challenged you to make it yourself and let us know how it was. Well, one of you did.

This is Noreaster’s rendition of The Hamburger Fatty melt.

Well Done!!!

In the process, we had a great discussion…at some time heated…regarding living above reproach and making disciples. We know the famous passage, Matthew 28:18-20Matthew 28:18-20 (ESV)Close

. It tells us to both spread the gospel as well as disciple.

Here is where I would love to hear from you. As a Pastor, I am often too close to the workings of the church, that I cannot see clearly as someone who may be looking to the church for help. So, what do you see as being the Churches responsibility in making disciples, and what do you see as your responsibility in it?

(By the way, I have installed the new youversion.com widget. When you see a verse in one of my posts, just hover over it and it will open a ballon window with that verse so that you can read it. Way to go lifechurch.tv!)

ht:los

This week, I give you. Bacon on a stick.

By the way. Last week. I challenged you all to try the food item and then send me pics of your adventure. One of you did. Tomorrow, I will post pics of their dinner!