Well, today was a more productive day then yesterday, but I still spent the better part of the day working on SMTP configurations. I did get a chance to get my feet wet (and dirty) in .net and have a small portion of my affiliate/creative server written.

For future reference, if you ever need to create a data layer in .net, there is no better choice than the open source LLBLGen. It generates all of the data layer code agaist your sql server database and is reasonable intuitive.

Coming from a vb6 background, some of the oo stuff was a little counter intuitive for me, but I must say that inheritance is definately where it's at.

I went to our sunday night prayer service at Mt Vernon and was so inspired by all of God's answers to prayers. Chuck and Kanoot are preparing to go to **** (a middle eastern country that has been in the news A LOT recently) on a fact finding mission for the Baptist IMB and Chuck asked that we pray specifically for his usefullness. He often suffers from migranes that are triggered most often by two things... 1) Heat 2) Fumes - he is going to a country where the weather report today was calling for 120 degrees and is a reasonably oil rich country with some fires still burning... we pray that the Lord provides him with comfort from headaches and that they do not hinder his "usefullness" in any way.

We also had a wonderful testimony from a man who just happened by the service tonight. Two years ago he had entered Herbron Colony rehab for a drug addiction. During his time there, he came to know Christ and grew strong. He had recently signed up to visit China for a year and had been debating whether or not his decision was in the Lord's will. He came to the prayer service tonight unexpectedly (he attends another church in the area) and out of "coincidence" (in which he does not believe) our main topic of prayer was that unreached people groups in China would be opened to hearing the plan of salvation and eternal life. What an awesome God we serve.

Just in case you were wondering, here is an easy way to know that plan of salvation... I am writting it first of all, in case you happen to just be browsing the blogs and are interested in knowing Chirst personally, and secondly because it is an outline of the plan that I have been trying to convict to memory over the last several weeks for a ministry that I am involved with at our Church... There is a word that we can use to explain what it takes to get to heaven... FAITH. Each of those letters stand for something and here they are:

F) F is for forgiveness. We cannot have heaven and eternal life without God's forgiveness. The bible says that "In Him [meaning Jesus] we have redemption, through his blood the forgiveness of sin".

A) A is for available... What's available? Forgiveness. It's available for ALL. The bible says that "For God so loved THE WORLD that he gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life". While it it available for ALL it is not AUTOMATIC. The bible also says that "not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter the kingdom of heaven."

I) I is for impossible. You may be wondering why it is not automatic that we go to heaven if God is loving and kind as it says in John 3:16. The reason is that while God is loving and offered his son for us, he is also a just God. The bible says "Judement is without mercy". It is impossible for God to allow ANY sin into heaven, and we all of have sinned. In Romans we read "For ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

T) So how then can anyone at all enter heaven where God allows no sin... the answer is T - which stands for Turn. Turn means to repent. The bible says that "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish". When we talk about turning, we are talking about two things... turning from something - that something is Sin and Self (or self-centeredness) and turning to something (or someone). That someone is Jesus Christ. Sin and self means that we have to turn away and repent (change direction) from our sinful lives and try to live a life that is God-Centered. Does this mean that we will no longer sin... absolutely not - it simple means that our desire is to be for the will of God and not our own. It is impossible for us to live a life without sin, but trusting in Jesus allows him to take our sin and forgive us from God's judgement. The bible says - "If I confess with my mouth Christ Jesus, and believe in my heart that God rasied him from the dead, I will be saved." It also says, "Chirst died, according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and rose again on the third day, according to the scriptures."

H) H is for heaven. Heaven is eternal life. Both here and now, and in the hereafter. The bible says that we can have a glimpse of heaven here... it says "I come (Jesus comes) so that they may have life, and have it more abundantly" and we can also live in heaven forever in the hereafter. It says, "If I go and prepare a place for you, then I will receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also." That's powerful stuff...

If you understand this outline, it is very easy to accept Christ. You can pray a simple pray to Jesus and admit that you are a sinner (like all of us). You may then ask for strength to overcome your sin and to repent from it. And then commit to the Lord that you will stive to follow Him through reading His word (the bible) and commiting it to your life. You will be empowered by His Holy Spirit and have a peace (the peace that I have) that is undescribable.

Thanks for listening tonight, and for letting me practice :-). Have a wonderful evening.

H

I write contact management software for a living. Complaints regarding Unsolicited Bulk Email and SPAM have been getting more and more prevailant over recent weeks and lawmakers are considering strong action against email marketer's... many of whom use software like mine.

We DO NOT BULK mail and never have and never will. We have in the past had users who have abused our service and delivered mail to non-opted recipients. On the FIRST complaint, we shut them off and send them on their way... we go a step further by watching for a variety of personally identifiable characteristics on new signups to ensure that the abusers never come back on our system again. This is where my concerns start.

New legislation could affect my ability to send email to people who have requested to receive email, simply because they have the ability to claim that they did not request the information. We are able (and do) provide IP address logs, confirmation emails, and a variety of other means of identifying that they did request the information, but occasionally, we may still get a complaint. My issue is that now, with a single complaint, I could be charged $250 per mail sent.... that's a whole lot of $250 charges... :-(

Here is a pretty good article on the topic [HERE]. I would love to hear what you think about all this.

I HATE SPAM as much as anyone else, but our software is used for legitimate correspondance and I only hope that it will be allowed to continue.

I will talk tomorrow about an issues that I have with some of AOL's message acceptance policy and reveal how very likely it is that you have not received a message that you were expecting, because they just vaporized it.

Chastity has decided to start a blog as well for daily devotional's, etc... It is the start of her desire to have a website that really is able to minister to other women. She will have daily scripture as well as her personal reflections on life and God. It should be very kewl... Click here to visit her site.

Today was a day that I felt like I was working SO hard without really getting anything accomplished... Working on BOO, I spent the better part of 8 hours just trying to configure a SMTP server for our client, while my affiliate system development was again put on hold. It happens a lot that way and hopefully tomorrow I will actually be able to get something done.

We ended the day with the two son's of some family friends coming over and eating dinner with us while there parents went to a fund raising dinner. It was a lot of fun and they are kids that we haven't seen in several months. It was a lot of fun and really helped me to recognize the blessing that I have in our own children.

Chastity has decided to start a weekly bible study in our home for children. We have SO enjoyed childrens choir and sunday school that we have decided to start having kids over twice a week for singing, bible study and dinner. It is only in the planning stages now, but hopefully it will start soon. It will be interesting to when this comes to fruition.

I decided to start today dumping my throughts and comments as well as what I accomplished for the day. This will probably end up being a pretty boring blog for anyone else to read, but it will allow me to go back and gain some perspective of what I have been doing over the last n months...