I soon plan on a series of blogs about the upcoming football season. We'll cover a little bit of this... a little bit of that.

Mainly: Texas, A&M, and Tech's upcoming seasons as well as an overall look at the season.

While every season is good, this last year was a bit of a letdown. But then again compared to the season we had 2 years ago. (05-06), it's hard to look good. That was definitely the best season in recent memory. No controversy about the bowls... great bowl matchups.... great regular season games. BCS bowls were all outstanding close games. We got to see a classic by Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno w/ an overtime kicking fiesta... Topped off by an outstanding come from behind championship game. Hard to top that one

None of the 3 texas teams were dominant by any stretch this last year... and OU went on to play for the big XII championship... which, I think we can all agree.... sucked. Big time. I fully expect the south champion to be decided during Thanksgiving weekend... and not anywhere north of Dallas.

The first post will probably be a general summary of the upcoming season... Stay tuned.


*** edited for the Jay Scott whining.

Romans

The study of Romans has been outstanding. The Angelo State University head basketball coach has been the front man for this study. I can't say much more than that I am very pleasantly surprised at his knowledge and wisdom of the Bible. It excites me that a godly man is in charge of our basketball team. I found out that he was a former Denton Bible Church member and it suddenly made sense.

We're only through Romans 2 at this point and I love that. Doing about 4-5 verses a week gives a great chance to dive into the word more deeply.


The best portion we've covered thus far has been the latter part of Romans 1, discussing the sinfulness of man.

18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

This sparked an interesting discussion. I was shocked at the people that still cling to the idea that "God is kind and wouldn't send people to hell who haven't heard of Him." Calvinist or not, it's a foolish notion to think that God will simply not punish a man for his sin. Later on we know that God has written his law on the hearts of man and that they know the difference from right and wrong. A great point brought up was of Malchizidek. A man who was not a jew, but was a priest of God. He lived with forward faith.

Also, from a sociological standpoint, we don't ever encounter new people-groups or tribes who do not believe in some form of diety and formed some sort of moral law. We do not have to teach our children to lie... and we don't have to teach them that lying is wrong either. They know it is wrong because of God's law written on their hearts.

24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people that we meet that will claim that the Bible only speaks against homosexuality in the old testament and that the new testament doesn't actually preach against that.

One of my favorite sites on the intarwebnets is here. I recommend you play w/ that one for a while. It'll leave you quite frustrated and angry.

Pretty blatent to me... but I digress.

28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

What Paul does so well here is put us (sinners and at the time gentiles) in their place. We are sinful. We are naturally full of the sins listed above. It is only because him softening our hearts that we put those things past us and instead pursue Christ.

Excellent excellent stuff. Romans 2 will be up next week when Paul puts the Israelites in their place as well.

Eron, Jay.... I apologize profusely.

No words or justification can right the wrong I've done by not posting. I've been in the stages of removing myself from my regular message board activities.... (Goodbye texags...) and continued travels throughout Texas.

March and April were both hard on me:

- First... who misses a wide open layup... seriously... Mr. Clutch himself stuck a dagger in my heart vs. Memphis. Man that stunk.

- Then, my man Billy-G left me for Kentucky and Ashley Judd. That hurt. Understood and I appreciate the man for what he did but it still sucked. Turgeon will continue the ownage.

- Finally... while I was upset for the missed layup... Acie Law IV was robbed of player of the year. Kevin Durant was far and away the best player in the league. Once Oden and Durant hit their grooves they were unstoppable this year. Without the draft rule those two would have been in the NBA tearing it up this fall coming. Remove both of those players from their team and they both finish in the same area. Remove Acie Law and you remove several wins this year from the Ags. Both OSU and Texas were stacked w/ other talent that could have gotten them to the same area. Remove both players and the teams have a 2-3 game difference in schedule.
Remove Law and ags drop about 6-7 more.

Let this be said that I know and acknowledge that Durant and Oden were better and more athletically-gifted athletes. Law was a scrapper. And that's why he deserved it.