Author Archive
Let me introduce you to my new blog….
If you’ve been following me on twitter, you know that this day has been coming for awhile now. I finally launched theBeerean.com. This is my new blog that is focused on the world of beer through the eyes of a Christian.
This is the reason I won’t have the Beer Tip of the Day on this site anymore. But don’t worry, I will continue to write on this blog. GregQualls.com will be where I will share my spiritual/theological/biblical/personal/youtube.comical insights. TheBeerean.com is where I plan so share all my beerical/theological/cultural insights.
I also plan to do a weekly video podcast on theBeerean.com called Beer Tip of the Week. I’ll give a new tip each week to help people enjoy their beer more.
This is a new venture for me and I’m really excited. I would ask you as a friend if you have your own blog, would you give theBeerean.com a little shout out. It’s hard getting a blog started from scratch. You need all the help you can get. For those of you don’t have a blog if you cold please tell everyone you know, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for all your love and support, and I hope you to see your shining faces at theBeerean.com soon (I know I can’t really see you…or can I?)
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Just one more reason I won’t go back to Microsoft
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Tech Wednesday - ESV Study Bible
Ok I know…it’s a book. Some might say that a book isn’t technology, but I say tell that to Gutenberg. Anyways back to the point at hand. Crossway recently annouced it is coming out with an ESV Study Bible in Ocober. For most of you this won’t be a big deal, but I’m totally geeking out on this one.
Let me give you a run down of the authors in this Study Bible:
That’s just the authors. This thing has:
I’ve also heard that buyng this study Bible will garuntee a place in heaven and a new BMW. Ok maybe not. But the free online version is a nice plus. All I have to say is I own too many Bibles already, but I might have to add one more to my collection.
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Grilling with Greg - Brisket
This one was only done with about three hours of sleep. So it doesn’t contain as much humor as the last one, but it will teach how to make on heck of a smoked brisket.
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26 Tips for Spending time with God…Hardcore Style
photo by: JasonRogers
If you’re like me, you have trouble spending time with God (I don’t like to use the words quiet time…it makes me feel like I’m five and in a “time out”). I’ve written in the past on some tips and tricks that I use to do this daily. But just like in a marriage relationship, sometimes you just need to spend more than a few minutes with your spouse. You need to spend the whole day. I call this spending time with God hardcore style.
I learned this concept from Doug Fields a few years ago. He talked about one of his youth saying that they “take God on a date.” Now taking God on a date is a little creepy for me, but I liked the concept. The idea is to just spend some extended time with God and nobody else.
To do this, I normally take an afternoon and spend the entire time reading scripture, praying, walking, reading some more, praying some more, and walking some more. The idea is to have a large chunk of time that is devoted to nothing but growing closer to God. This isn’t time to study your Bible and parse Greek verbs…this is time to just be with your Creator, Savior, and Sustainer.
The following are 26 quick tips that can help you with your hardcore time with God.
- Get out of your house. There are to many distractions there. To many things to play with.
- Get away from people.
- Go to a park or go hiking. Go be in His creation.
- Wear comfortable clothing.
- Turn off everything…phone, pager, radio, ipod, laptop, ect. If it has an on/off, make it off.
- Look for God in everything and then give Him the glory.
- Take your Bible (ESV
), a pen, and something to write on. - Anytime you think about something that you need to do when you get home, write it down and forget about it. This will allow you to focus on your time with God. (this is a good practice in general)
- Take a list of prayer requests and things/people you want to pray for.
- Have an agenda/time line.
- Don’t have an agenda/time line.
- Pray, pray, pray
- Take a snack and some cash.
- Take some water.
- Tell one person where you are going to be in case of emergencies (your wife goes into labor). This helps to keep your thoughts from being overtaken.
- Read through a whole book of the Bible several times.
- Read through a passage of scripture several times.
- Read all the gospels in one sitting (it can be done in an afternoon).
- Fast
- Eat
- Just walk and talk to God as if He was walking right next to you.
- Take a short nap (it’s better to sleep for 20 minutes than to fight it for 3 hrs).
- Write out your prayers to God.
- Pray for God to reveal sin in your life that is keeping you from Him.
- Take some time to sit and listen to God.
- Be diligent to focus on God and your relationship.
Well I hope that helps. I’m off to go spend some hardcore time with God. Leave me a comment, with any tips that you might have for spending hardcore time with God.
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Seriously! Someone screwed up on this one.
Ok so Los posted this video of the American Idol contestants singing “Shout to the Lord!” Now there is something seriously wrong with this. I’m not against them singing a worship song. I’m glad that they changed the lyrics back to say Jesus. They did a really good job singing it. The song even has a special place in my heart, but that that is where they went wrong.
This song is special to me because my youth group sang it at camp when I was a sophomore in high school. So that means that this song is on the cutting edge of 90’s Christian music (which we all know was like the cutting edge of 60’s secular music). So now the one of the world’s top rated shows just showed how Christianity is so in touch with today’s culture (sarcasm). I just think American Idol could have picked something a little better…but oh well. That’s just my opinion. What’s yours?
They even do the Choir Side Step Dance!!!!
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Tech Wednesday - Evernote…My new second brain.
This weeks new technology that I cam across is called Evernote. I heard about this through twitter and had to check it out. First off I have to say this thing is pretty cool in the sense that it works on PC and Mac and has a web side to it too (and they all sync with each other). Unfortunately, the Mac software only works on Leopard (I still have Tiger).
The idea behind Evernote is to be a place where you can store all the information that you come across in day and easily pull it back up through search features and tags later down the road. There are other things out there that can do this, but the main thing that wowed me was the fact it can search text in pictures (even handwriting).
I’ve just started using it (and only the web side since I don’t have Leopard), but I’m liking it so far. For a person like me that ingests copious amounts of information every day, this is great. I’m pretty good at remembering things, but this will make things easier.
I’ve included the video from their site below. I have 9 invites left. If anyone is interested, send me an email through my contact page.
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BTotD #5 - It’s too Cold.
I regret to tell everyone that this will be the last Beer Tip of the Day on GregQualls.com. But don’t worry. I have something special in the works that I’ll reveal to everyone in a week or so. Until then enjoy this final BTotD.
Here is the reality. Most beers are served too cold and this is a bad thing. I remember growing up and seeing signs at the local bars that said, “Coldest beer in town.” The only problem with this is that most beers aren’t meant to be served at super frigged levels. By drinking your beer extremely cold, it does two things.
- It doesn’t allow the beer to “open up” and reveal all of it’s wonderful aromas.
- It numbs your tastes buds and inhibits you from being able to experience the full flavor of the beer.
Now certain beer companies serve their beers at extremely low temperatures to disguise the real taste of the beer (which would be categorized as disgusting). I see this as one of Big Business’ greatest conspiracies to dupe the American beer drinker. They want you to think that you need to drink beer really cold. Then they can sell you their crap and have you think that it is good. To use a friends analogy, “It’s like the Wal-Mart greeter. They’re there to make you feel happy about all the crap you’re about to buy.”
Well I’m sorry…I’m not happy.
So what temperature should you drink your beer at? That is a wonderful question, and I’m glad you asked. Each style of beer actually has a different temperature. The general rule is to drink it at the same temperature that it was fermented at. If you’re like me, you’re not going to go out and research to see what temperature your beer was fermented at. So I’ve included a handy chart from herestobeer.com that will give you an idea of what temperature your beer should be served.
So here is your homework for this week. Get a beer with which you are familiar with the flavor. Now take your time drinking it and take note of how the flavor and smell changes as the temperature of the beer changes.
Until next time, enjoy your beer.
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Learn how to Grill with Greg
Did some grilling this weekend and thought I would share. Come back next week and I’ll put one together for how to smoke a brisket.
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Murphy v. God - God Wins!!!
photo by: arriba
This just happened to be one of those months were Murphy decided he wanted to visit our family. We had over $1900 in additional costs that came up this last month. Shannon had to get a crown on her tooth, the water pump had to be replaced on the car, we had some additional travel expenses come up, we owe money on our taxes, and various other little things that were not planned for popped up this month.
Now we don’t have a lot of money saved up for rainy days. Shannon and I had no idea how we were going to pay for all these added expenses, but the reality was that God had things already planned out. Within the last 5 days we have received two checks totaling over $1100.
We had an idea that we might be getting one of the checks (but even the amount of that one was a surprise), but the other one came totally unexpected. For the past few days, we had been worrying about how we were going to make ends meet. We were going to have to dip into our emergency fund, until Shannon checked our mail on yesterday. Shannon came to me with tears running down her face as she held a check for over $500.
We can worry all we want, but in the end God provides for his children. God ran into Murphy in dark alley this week, and God kicked Murphy’s @##.
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