I was sitting in my office and thought I would share this quick thought.  A few months ago I had the opportunity to hang out with a close friend.  At one time he was a pastor for a church and had a large library for preparing his sermons every week.  He is now working a “regular” job and doesn’t see himself being a pastor ever again.

I remember coveting after my friend’s library.  I remember going into his office and thinking to myself, “I want a library like this some day.”  I remember just staring at his books and taking note of his collection.  I even remember the distinct smell his office had from all the books and wanting my office to have that same smell.

When he heard that I was going through Re:Train, he wanted to help me with my expenses, but due to life circumstances he wasn’t able to. While I was visiting with him, he took me into his garage where he had his library stored.  He humbly pointed out the boxes and told me to take whatever I wanted/needed.  I left his house with more than 500 theology, commentary, history, cultural analysis, and linguistic books.  The total cost has to be over $3000 easily.

While he couldn’t help me pay for my flights to Seattle or the cost of my laptop, what this friend did in my mind was priceless.  From his gift, I’ve been able to do all the research for my papers.  I’ve been able to loan/give books out to friends.  My library has more than doubled.  All these things are great, but the greatest gift this friend gave me was a lesson in generosity.  I had to ask myself if I would be willing to do the same thing…and I don’t know if I could have.

This makes me ask you the question:  What do you have that you don’t need (or do need) that you need to give to someone else to bless them?  Do you have a treasure that you need to pass on to progress the kingdom for Jesus?

So for one of the first times in my life I’m in the “In Crowd.” Yesterday Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle posted a video on his Facebook letting everyone know that he had capped out on the number of friends that he could have. Apparently Facebook only allows you to have 5,000 friends (I don’t think I would ever find this out), and he hit the limit. Now I’m normally not one to be prideful (yeah right), but I must say it feels kinda cool to know that I’m a friend with Mark Driscoll on Facebook and nobody else can do that now.

I know it’s lame…but you’re only saying that because you aren’t one of the 5,000.

The following is part 5 of a 5 part series. Go here for Part 1 

I started to head to the security check point that I came through the first time about 500 feet down the hallway.  My mind was racing.

I remember putting it in my back pocket.  Maybe it fell out when I sat down at Starbucks.  Maybe it’s in the men’s restroom.  How the hell am I going to get it back?  Their not going to let me in and I’m going to be stuck in Seattle for ever.  I don’t want to be stuck in Seattle I just want to home and see Shannon.

“Excuse me sir…I think I might have left my driver’s license here when I came through security the first time.”
“We have a driver’s license that we found.  What’s your name?”
“Greg Qualls”
“Let me go look.”

Why the hell did I go get Diego’s Bible?  They could have mailed it to him. If I had just stayed in the airport I wouldn’t be dealing with all this right now.  God why didn’t you just have Diego not forget his Bible in the van…I would be probably sipping on some coffee right now still reading my book…

But I wouldn’t have realized that I didn’t have my driver’s license…then I would have to go through all the crap to get a new driver’s license.  And I would have to pay the money for the new driver’s license.  And I would have to deal with the DMV.

So I guess it is a good thing that I did go and get it. Thanks God for having Diego forget his Bible in the van…wait a second.  God why didn’t you just make sure that Diego didn’t forget his Bible and make sure that I didn’t loose my driver’s license.  I would still be sitting in Starbucks reading my book.

“Here you go sir…just sign hear and print your name her.”
“Thank you sir.”

As I walked to the TSA agent and finally handed him my driver’s license and boarding pass for the second time in the last hour, I began to think to myself…God really does work in mysterious ways.

And I heard in the quiet of my heart, “Yes I do…and I’m good.”  I don’t know why God had me go through this little adventure.  There could be several reasons.  All I know was that, in the end, I felt the hand of God working through all of it.  I felt His plan being worked out in my life and I felt drawn closer to Him.

At least He knows what He’s doing, because the majority of the time I don’t have a clue.

Ok so Alf and I did a video update today…but for some reason it has no audio.  So here are some quick thoughts:

• Matt Chandler is awesome…he is a new favorite teacher.
• John Piper seems like he is on the edge of crazy and that is awesome!
• Seattle has some good beer.
• I like Jamison (I don’t know how to spell) whiskey
• If you want to watch the lessons live from home (for free) you can go to theresurgence.com/live  (hurry the conference ends tomorrow)
• I miss Shannon
• Mark Driscoll’s love for his kids makes me look forward to being a daddy
• Mark Driscoll’s love for his wife make me proud to have a wife like Shannon
• Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, John Piper, CJ Mahaney’s love for Christ gives me a passion to grow closer to Jesus and to spread the gospel
• I know that I’m called…I think God will clarify to me later
• The guys that I’m out here with are great men of God and I love them

That’s all for now…I’m on Alf’s laptop and the battery is about to go.  Until next time.

I normally save technology posts for Wednesday’s, but I wanted to tell you about this while I was in Seattle.  I got set up on twitter.com yeterday.  Twitter is a mini-blogging system.  It’s like your status in Myspace and Facebook, but it is on its own.  It alows you to give friends short updates to what you are doing/thinking.  They can subscribe to your feed and recieve a text message or IM message every time you update it (here is a full tutorial on twitter).

It’s been pretty fun using it yesterday and today.  I like it because I’ve been able to send my wife Shannon the emails too.  So she is able to share in my experience while I’m here.  You can go to my profile at twitter.com/gregqualls and be able to keep up with me as I’m updating it frequently with what I’m doing and thinking.

Just a quick video update from Seattle for the Text and Context Conference.

Isn’t amazing how God works things out sometimes.  I’m not necessarily a chatty person when I’m flying.  I know there are some of you out there who look forward to taking flights just so you can talk to your seat mate.  I’m not that person.  I like to read or better yet sleep.  So I wasn’t looking for someone to chat with on the plane today.  But God has other plans.

After shoving my bag into the overhead storage I took my seat by the window.  My seat mate commented about how he ripped his bags on his way to Africa a few months ago and had to duct tape them back together for the rest of the trip.  Now you chatty types would see this as an opportunity to hop into a wonderful conversation about Africa and his trip.  I don’t do that…I smile, nod, and say, “That had to suck.”  I figure this is sympathetic, but keeps me from having to talk anymore.

But God has other plans.  A few minutes later, my seat mate asks if I’m originally from Seattle.  I told no that I live in Albuquerque and that I’m going to a conference in Seattle.  He asked what conference.  Now honestly I was thinking about lying and saying I was going to some UPS conference or something…but I decided to say that I was going to the Resurgence conference.  At this point he told me he was going to the same one.

After talking about the conference a little, he started telling me about his ministry.  He is part of a record label called Reach Records and a ministry called ReachLife.  And for the next hour he showed me videos and had me listen to audio that his ministry has produced.  I must say they are really using their culture to present the gospel in a way that people understand.  You need to check them out at http://www.reachlife.org/.  Pretty awesome stuff.