TOP CHEF 7

So, i have been thinking about doing this for quite some time... and after some prayer, and not so subtle nudging... i am going to apply for TOP Chef season 7.

Seriously if you haven't seen the show, one of the best displays of new culinary talent that is on TV. As soon as Chris get back in town we are going to shoot our 5 min audition video, and i am just finishing the 28 page application.

who knows, might make it on there... wouldn't that be crazy! So send out your prayers, if this is supposed to happen, than lets do it. If not, well... we will just have to see!

have you checked out my Chefs blog Lately?

a word

My mornings start out like most mornings, i wake up to Annsley's voice over the baby monitor saying "Daggy... 'ere are you" like clock work at 7:15am. I get her out of bed with he 52 million blankets (her newest obsession), fix her breakfast (this morning "blue" cinnamon toast... which is not blue at all... don't ask... i don't know), i hop in the shower, eat, dress, go to work.

Each morning over the last year and a half i have been making it a practice to pray over my family on my way to work... this means i dont turn on 620 WDAE, or my latest audio book... but i pray for the things of God to fill us, protect us, and against the things or schemes of the enemy.

The last couple of days i have been feeling this closeness to God in my car... i don't know why... but i do.

this morning i made my way to Mike and Emily's new house to meet with them for their wedding which is this saturday. After an hour of good conversation, a cinnamon bagel, and a good cup of coffee...Mike, Emily, our good friends Joey and Niki and myself took the time to pray for this weekend.

Which is a HUGE story... Mike and Emily got divorced almost 2 years ago... and God took something horribly broken and has reshaped it into something so beautifully broken. As we were praying i couldn't help remember all the conversations, tears, questions, prayers that God used to lead them to this place of redemption.

I am so honored that i got to be apart of this morning... to see friends... to laugh, cry (yes i am a crier) to pray with people who are choosing to live a different way... the way of Love, of forgiveness given and received, of suffering and sacrifice, of second place, of Joy and sorrow intermingled, of purpose, of confidence and questions, of mystery and hope... people who are choosing to follow the way of Jesus.

After this celebration, Niki said she felt that God was speaking a word over me... She said "thoroughbred". Which in my mind has huge thoughts attached to it... not just my love of horses (which she has no clue about).

So i am asking God today to speak to this word... what does this mean... i am praying for the promises that God gave my family will come to be, and i am filled with an overwhelming richness today.

How did this not make the top 3

So i am a little bummed, a couple of months ago Davey and I were given the info about the St.Pete Song Contest from Chris and Charity here at Element.

The basic idea was to write a song that would become the official Song of St. Petersburg. This song could be used in advertising, commercials, websites... So when we began the writing process we decided it would be best to write it with those avenues in mind.

After a week of tweaking... i got to say we were both pretty pumped about it. It has a great hook, it have the commercial relevance that we were going for, and a ton of energy.

"This is my City"

so today they announced the top 3... and as i bet you can imagine... we did not make it.

Now granted this whole recording was done on our Mac, with no external mics... so the recording in Ok...

I guess i am more bummed that it was passed over for 3 songs that sound alike (classic island rock) and that will continue to describe it as a sleep beach town, instead of a burgeoning art, music, and sports community.

All in All, i wish them the best... We spoke with some people from the office during the competition who were incredibly helpful and who has such a great sense of welcoming.

but any city's out there who want a killer new tune to use for their marketing... just let us know.

New Bumper

Hey guys, here is the Killer Bumper that Chris and Melody made for our new series "Utopia", if you would like it... just ask and there are many more cool videos that we are doing for this series.

I freaking love EPIC series!!!

wow...

So, i am not gonna lie... i google my name. Don't act so surprised you know you do it do. What came up today was a blast from the past. Besides the fact that my cheeks we significantly more chubby... i came across a video of a song i wrote about Jill and I... and i wrote it for my sisters wedding almost 5 years ago.

I was having coffee this morning with one of our element guys, he was sharing about some of the HUGE painful things that are going on in their marriage... and i feel like most our generation has not been taught how 2 become 1.

Sadly we learn it out the hard way, or hurt the very one who is supposed to be completing us, to the point of no return.

When i heard this song (which i haven't sung since... to be honest i completely forgot that i even wrote it), i had HUGE amounts of memories, some good, some painful, some still in process of our first couple years of marriage.

If i only knew then what i know now, right.

If you can look past the cheeks, and the pour audio recording... i think this song might speak to you like it spoke to me again.

Chef Bobby

So i have my next big Chefs Table Wed September 30th at Chefs on the Loose here in Tampa. If you are looking for a great date, some killer food (if i do say so myself) and a fun time in one of Tampa's coolest places... well then i think you should come.

Check out my Chef's Blog, make sure you RSVP (seating is limited) and i hope to see you there.

Resonate

i will let Paul talk to you just as he did with me today...

Romans 4

Trusting God

^1-3 So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we're given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, "Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own."

^4-5If you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don't call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

^6-9David confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who trusts God to do the putting-everything-right without insisting on having a say in it is one fortunate man:

Fortunate those whose crimes are carted off,
whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
Fortunate the person against
whom the Lord does not keep score.
Do you think for a minute that this blessing is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don't we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God?

^10-11Now think: Was that declaration made before or after he was marked by the covenant rite of circumcision? That's right, before he was marked. That means that he underwent circumcision as evidence and confirmation of what God had done long before to bring him into this acceptable standing with himself, an act of God he had embraced with his whole life.

¹²And it means further that Abraham is father of all people who embrace what God does for them while they are still on the "outs" with God, as yet unidentified as God's, in an "uncircumcised" condition. It is precisely these people in this condition who are called "set right by God and with God"! Abraham is also, of course, father of those who have undergone the religious rite of circumcision not just because of the ritual but because they were willing to live in the risky faith-embrace of God's action for them, the way Abraham lived long before he was marked by circumcision.

^13-15That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God's decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God's promise at that—you can't break it.

¹⁶This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that's reading the story backward. He is our faith father.

^17-18We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, "You're going to have a big family, Abraham!"

^19-25Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.