Ben's Blessing Blog

When John Nadaskay was in Botswana I was able to fill in for teaching his Bible Class for that month and I had a great time doing it. During one of the classes I decided to write a script and have the kids act it out. I wrote it on the story of Moses since that is what we were studying and though the kids got a little glued on their paper because of the camera I think they did a good job. The ad-libbing is hilarious, "Mr. Hall, can I add more to my part because I only have two lines". The little kids just crack me up. Their such a blessing.

Hey ya'll!

One of the top phrase that gets me upset is the phrase which some
Christians use to excuse their sin and that is they are under grace. I
am a strong proponent of the verse. How shall we sin that grace should
abound? This subject was brought up to me as I read in 1 Corinthians 5
recently, thankfully I haven't heard this excuse for sin from a
Christian for a very long long time, but this reminder to not make
excuses for sin still remains. Now the reason for the topic of this
blog post is in verse six and it says that this glorying this church
had in that they could sin and be forgiven was "Not Good" . Now as I
studied into these verses with my friend we pulled out some good
questions and that started off with this thought, how ineffective is a
church that preaches forgiveness of sin yet lives like the world to
attract the world. I say absolutely ineffective. Yet how does a church
like this one become so much in sin and become ineffective? It was
through the passivness of allowing one sin to slip through the cracks.
This thought is heavy because it is easy to be like, "awe come on,
this isn't to bad and beside God has forgiven me" and soon we are sin
again and again and sear our conscious which God has put in us till
wrong looks right and right looks wrong. It's a horrible position.
Take the advice from the Bible, purge that leaven (which is a picture
of sin). To purge means to take something bad out and replace with
something good.
There is no reason to glory while living in sin, but O can we
can rejoice when the Lord when we are living in victory over sin and
we see the pleasure of God upon our life. That is glory.
Now this church received a command which we should heed. In verse
nine it says, " I wrote to you in an epistle, not to company with
fornicators" the list of sinful people goes on. Bottom line, do not
hang around with those that are enjoying sin. The worlds wisdom even
agrees with this point, you've heard the phrases that who you hang out
with you will become like. When you have friends that enjoy ungodly
movies, people that share unholy music or speak lightly of God. For
example, have you ever watched a video that caused you to cring
because of something not right in it , but you shook it off and then a
later video which was also not good, didn't cause you to feel as
guilty... That's a little leaven which will destroy your discernment
of sin
Stay away from those people or programs. They are leaven in your
life which will only breed more sin and cause you start thinking of
good as evil and evil as good. Remember Adam and Eve? Eve hung out
with the serpent and all of a sudden the fruit looked good for her and
Gods protection on her life looked like a barbed wire fence keeping
her from the pleasures she wanted to enjoy.

Guard your eyes
Guard your thoughts
Guard every area of your life, for if you allow sin to creep in soon
your life will be destroyed. Trust the Word of God, and don't make
excuses for your flesh.

Dont glory in sin but, Reject sin and Repent of sin

BenH

The days have been busy, the nights long, but I am still 'rejoicing in the Lord' as Jon Wilhite would say (and his family :).

HEY EVERYONE!

If you would like to follow the trip here please email my mother at jghall09@gmail.com I will be sending my updates to her so she can forward them on to those who are interested.

Hi Everyone,
WE MADE IT.... hehe. After many hours of flying and riding and pacing
in the airport we arrived in Africa. It has been a wonderful
experience so far. It's like a hands on Bible Course and I love it. I
slept really good last night like normal. I believe I inherited my
grandfathers ability to sleep almost anywhere. =) I stayed up later
once I arrived and was able to thankfully get on the internet :D So I
was able to catch up on my emails and send out updates for my iPhone
applications. Unfortunately I was not able to complete them before I
left because of some technical difficulties. But, I was extremely
pleased with their results because what they told me would for sure
take almost 2 weeks they found it didn't take as long and they got it
done in a few days. I got a team that works for me in India and a lady
that does some graphic work for my in Italy and so it makes it really
fun with them being on different time zones and it makes it even more
interesting when I start flying to other countries like Thailand and
now on the African continent.
Sooo, okay today I woke up around 6:30 Bot Time and realized it is
not possible to take a shower without a towel, well I guess it's
possible, but it would make me rather uncomfortable for the rest of
the day. So I was able to do my devotions etc. and then find out where
the towels were later. Then throughout the morning all us guys
filtered through the shower and then had a breakfast of eggs and
toast. Great stuff. Pastor then had a group devotional and showed us
the method he uses for developing plans for the the day, the week, or
even your life. Great stuff. My brother Titus was pretty awed by
everything taught also and is quite excited that he could come.
There was also a number of people who wanted to meet with us and so
we met and had a great time talking. The people here are very
friendly. Thank you for all who have told me that they are praying for
me. It was such a HUGE blessing to hear from sooo many of you and know
that you were concerned for the work. Prayer makes great things happen!

BenH

Here is a link to a video I took with my iPhone of my moms surprise
B'day... It was a really special day for my mom. It was quite a busy
day for us :) We were able to have a few ladies and our grandparents
to the house and when my mom got back from a trip at the beach with my
dad she was completely shocked to see us all waiting inside. I'll put
the video online tomorrow which my sisters and I made for my mom. It
was a very nice day :D and very special to her.

BenH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_sIiWMXRHA

I can't believe I'm actually doing this, but I am :) I am actually going to Botswana.... and I'm not the only one going. Titus will also be going with me. The decision for Titus to go was only made this past Sunday and wow, I needed to get going then on planning plane tickets and organizing some projects Titus has been helping me on. I just bought the tickets today so now it's official.

As I've said in previous blog posts, I have recently begun to preach for Children's Church. As you all know I really enjoy working with kids and this has been a great opportunity for me to begin preaching practice. Well, Today the energy level had to be recorded at an all time high for my teaching experience. Seriously, I am so exhausted. One kid was bouncing up and down before class and I asked him what he was doing and he said, "Wellll, Today I don't have a soccer game because it's raining so I'm getting all my energy out now!" The way most of the boys were going I would have guess the same was true about all of them :)