We’ve all heard the excuse from our teenagers, “Oh, I don’t listen to the words, I just like the music,” but if the song happens to come on the radio they know every word. Chron.com posted an article that supports Underage Sex Is Tied to Raunchy Music, backing youth pastors’ hunch that lyrics have a big influence on shaping teenagers’ view of sex and the opposite gender. This study suggests that “teens who listen to explicit lyrics seem to lose their virginity sooner.” Well worth the read.

On the way home from our honeymoon a couple weeks ago Dana and I started listening to the audio book of Frank Peretti’s novel, “House.” The whole story is pretty suspenseful and doesn’t really follow his typical style of spiritual warfare. It mostly resembles a horror story of a haunted house, at least until it reaches the end. Toward the climax of the novel it becomes clear that the thriller is just one big metaphor about the state of our sinful hearts before God. As it ended, my mind raced to connect all the theology and implications of Peretti’s writing, which hit me pretty hard. When it ended, Dana and I both sat in silence for a while before sharing with each other the convictions of our desperately wicked hearts.

It’s easy to gloss over sin and disregard a lot of things that “aren’t a big deal,” but before God any sin is a HUGE deal. If even “our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), just think of how disgusting our sin is! All the negative thoughts that rush through our minds, the critical attitudes, and self-righteous pride — no one else may know about these things, but to God it’s repulsive. Thankfully, as Peretti’s book makes clear, the only way to be clean before God is by the sacrifice of Christ. And the only way to please Him is by allowing Him to use us in order to glorify Himself. No human effort will ever come close.

After hearing this book, I don’t think my view of sin, my heart, or my Savior will ever be the same. I pray my view of sin becomes as nauseating to me as it is to God and that my heart will always be a reflection of His purity.

And by the way, I finally got some wedding pictures posted. Our photographer put all the best pictures together in a wedding album for us, but was kind enough to give us some of the “leftover” pictures on CD at no extra cost. Enjoy!

Mark Batterson has a great post addressing creativity in ministry leadership and “keeping what is sacred from becomming routine.” Please read and apply.

A couple weeks ago I was asked about my personal relationship with Christ and what I did to maintain it. I guess most people except an answer like, “I read my Bible, pray, and have personal worship time and 6:00AM every morning.” Although I participate in these things (rarely at 6:00AM, though!), it’s not a forced disciplined routine for me. My time with God is different all the time. I find new and creative things to do with Him. Otherwise my spiritual walk begins to feel like a rut, not an active and vital relationship.

Although Mark Batterson’s post relates more to ministry philosophy than to personal spiritual growth, I think his concept can be applied both ways.

Today I read Marko’s post about feeling kinda weird after being recognized in Starbucks by a random youth pastor. It brought to memory a time several years ago when I was at the YS National Youth Worker’s Convention in Atlanta. A random lady, in a VERY crowded elevator, asked me about my Nashville tee-shirt. I told her I worked for a youth ministry there, she asked which one, I said, “ZJam Youth Ministries,” and she exclaimed, “You mean the one with Bill Scott?!!” I said yes and she started telling me how much she loves the radio show. Then she asked me what I did for ZJam and after I told her I authored the online NeXT STeP Bible Studies, she just freaked out. I was seriously ready for that elevator to reach a destination because I was feeling pretty uncomfortable along with everyone else in there, I’m sure. She asked, “Are you Tim Schmoyer?!!” and when I told her I was, she got even more excited and told me how much she loved the Bible studies I wrote and how her youth group uses them as their weekly curriculum. Thankfully the elevator stopped and I just pretended that it was my floor and got off. It was seriously weird. I took the stairs the rest of the way.

Whew! I spent most of today re-building my blog here. There’s still some dead links and features around here that aren’t working right, but I’ll continue to work on it as time permits and figure it all out.

I’m now using Google’s Picasa Web Albums for storing and organizing pictures since it integrates so nicely with Picasa, a free photo management tool from Google that I’ve come to love. Earlier today I uploaded our honeymoon pictures, which can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.com/rockinyp We’re still waiting for our wedding pictures, but be assured that they’ll be posted just as soon as we get our hands on ‘em. Feel free to post any comments on our pictures!

The honeymoon went great. We spent the wedding night at a hotel in Little Rock and then Sunday drove to Eureka Springs, AR where we spent a week in a little cabin that overlooked Beaver Lake. It was such a relaxing and restful time for both of us. We enjoyed touring caverns, swimming in the lake, riding wave runners, canoe trips, hiking, riding trains, and just walking around the historic district of town. The pictures will give a better idea of how wonderful everything was.

Dana posted some other pictures on her blog and wrote more about the wedding and honeymoon. Check ‘em out!