the sosebee's

I’ve been ordering books lately. This isn’t too out of the ordinary. It’s safe to say the wife and myself splurge on books. It’s what depletes our entertainment budget. Something I came across a while back has led me to these specific books.

9 Marks

“a ministry dedicated to equipping church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources. Our goal is simple: churches that display the glory of God.” (from their website).

I first found 9 Marks through Together for the Gospel. A biennial conference that encourages pastors to take their stand together for the gospel. Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney, Mark Dever and Ligon Duncan began the conference. And so I started listening to all the sermons from past years. It’s amazing how the Lord speaks through his word being preached.

Back to 9 Marks. It began at Capital Hill Baptist in Washington D.C. where Mark Dever is the pastor. A well read pastor in Ecclesiology, he has studied the church for many, many years and makes very apt observations concerning the state of modern evangelical churches.

From 9 Marks I’ve been led to a few books:

The one I’m currently reading: The Shepherd Leader by Timothy Witmer.

Biblical Theology by Michael Lawrence. Who was the associate pastor at Capital Hill but is now the lead pastor at Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, OR.

The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne.

and finally Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin

I commend all of these resources to you and will hopefully get a chance to write a little more on them individually.

last weekend the sandlins and ashley pickers made the trek up to south kakalaki for some good hang out time with corey and me. this is the first time in a loooong time that i’ve hung out with shawn and katie for more than an hour or two at once (i got pickers last summer on our cross-country adventure). can i just say it was BLESSED. oh! the joy and comfort of good friends. i think my favorite moment was Friday evening at dinner. we were sitting at a round table in the window of a downtown restaurant, laughing, talking, and i just looked around the table at all of their faces and thought how comfortable and good it was to be together again. close friends are a precious gift. corey and I are realizing that especially during this time of our life. somewhere between college and here, making good friends got harder. are we just getting old and biased? i’m not sure, but we are thanking Him for our weekend with these three.

among other things, we made the drive up to table rock state park for bluegrass on the mountain (they gather the second saturday of every month). so fun, and completely surprising. we entered the lodge to find a circle of chairs in the middle of the room. anyone who wanted could join the circle and play a song as they passed the mic around. there were tables in the back, and it was almost like pot-luck dinner. everyone brought something to share. my favorite was the strawberry cake. yummm. we got a fine samplin’ of tunes upstairs, and downstairs after pot-luck was even better! corey and i hope to visit again around christmas.

I noticed our blog posts are beginning to coincide with major holidays. It seems these are the only times we get to do anything remotely interesting. Okay, so that’s not completely true. But it is about the only time we have to actually write a blog post about what we got to do.

We hung around Greenville for the actual 4th of July. No big plans. We drove downtown and watched the fireworks display from the car. It was pretty impressive. Fireworks, I think, always make you think of childhood. They conjure up countless memories of almost blowing your hand off playing with those things. Oh but how much fun they are.

We drove up to DuPont State Forest, as we both had Monday off work, to do a little hiking. It was a great day for a trip to the mountains. Actually, any day that involves the mountains is a good day. It was nice walking the trails in the coolness of the shade with one another. Talking and holding hands as walked in the quiet. From one waterfall to the next we strolled. Here are a few more of the things we saw: DuPont State Forest

I hope your 4th weekend was filled with as beauty. We’ll try to post before the next major holiday. But if not, be sure to check back on Labor Day!