I’m officially done with the CPA Exam! After waiting what seemed like forever, I was able to check online this morning and see that I had passed both Audit and Financial, the two sections I had left to complete.

What a relief!

So…to answer the question, “what’s next?” …there’s still an ethics exam that has to be taken. It’s a take home exam that I complete and send in, as I understand it.

But by far, the biggest steps are behind me.

I’m going to take the rest of the day to jump up and down and run around screaming like a little girl. You’re welcome to join me if you like.

One year while I was in college, I carried a Bible with me everywhere I went.

I found that I had several 10 to 15 minute gaps in my day, and thought I could fill the time well by using it to read the Bible. I got the idea partially from my roommate Chris, who I noticed had a Bible with him just about everywhere he went.

My idea worked well. I got to spend a good bit more time reading my Bible than I had been previously. It was a good use of time and overall, a good discipline.

One day Chris and I were talking about it and he made the comment, “You know, you have to be careful when you carry a Bible with you everywhere you go. After a while, you might find that you start to think you’re better than everyone who doesn’t do the same.” It was an interesting perspective, but I didn’t really understand it at the time.

I continued on carrying my Bible everywhere…but after a few more months of it, I noticed that my habit of reading the Bible in my free time had turned into two other habits:

1) NOT reading the Bible in my free time (but continuing to carry it).
2) Thinking to myself that in some spiritual way, I was better than others who didn’t carry their Bible 24/7.

I was able to identify this before it got too out of hand, so I quickly solved the problem: I quit carrying my Bible everywhere.

But in hindsight, I’m not sure that was the best solution. Or at least ALL of the best solution. Because I was still neglecting the habit of reading my Bible.

So, to summarize, here’s what happened: I identified myself becoming a legalist, defining my spirituality by a set of rules and actions that I performed. My knee-jerk reaction was to stop doing whatever action it was that made me a legalist, and continue on my way. But here’s the problem with addressing legalism that way: all it does is turn legalism into laziness.

You can argue all day about which is better, to be a legalist or lazy. But I think we can agree that neither of them are the goal that we should be striving for as a Christian. So then, what should we strive for? Well, there’s no mandate or example in the Bible I’ve found where it is expressed that God enjoys guiding the lazy through their lives to do great things in His name (Of course, I’m not a Bible scholar, so I’m not asserting that it doesn’t exist…simply that I’ve never read it).

But as Christians in the Bible belt, doesn’t it seem like that’s the predominant lifestyle theme? We simply sail through life, reacting to whatever comes our way, and expecting that God will one day drop some great destiny on us because we think He should. Instead of the Purpose-Driven Life…what we end up living out is more like the Purpose-Entitled Life.

In fact, Psalm 1 says of the “blessed” man:

[H]is delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.

He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.

So here’s the crux of the issue that I came face to face with yesterday:

The cure for legalism isn’t laziness. It’s authenticity.

Lyndsay and I just got back from our summer family vacations. I posted pictures in the pictures section, but I thought I’d show off a couple here too:

We first went to Sedan, Kansas with Lyndsay’s parents and stayed at a place known as “the shed.” (pictured above) The Shed was great because we could totally unplug from the rest of the world and relax. Of course, Lyndsay’s family relaxes by doing things, so we rode four wheelers, fished, shot guns, cooked, and occasionally rode into town to see what was going on. This was my first time in Kansas, so I also got to meet Lyndsay’s Uncle Steve, who I had never met before. He’s quite the fisherman–he gave me a few tips and after a few minutes I caught a 2 pound bass!

It was fun to take pictures because I could get a lot of outdoor pictures. Here are a couple other pictures that I took.

You can see the whole Kansas Album here.

Then we went to Fort Walton Beach, FL for a family reunion with some extended family on my mom’s side of the family. We haven’t seen them in years, so it was good to get to spend time and catch up. Opposite of Lyndsay’s family, my family relaxes by doing nothing. So that’s a lot of what we did.

I got to take some pictures with my dad’s fancy schmancy DSLR, so I got some really great pictures during the trip.

At sundown, we went hunting for crabs. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be–they’re pretty fast little guys. But we did catch one.

Here’s Lyndsay with my Cousin Anne, my mother (also named Anne), my sister Laura, and Uncle Ed.

My grandmother and her friend Richard got to come too, which was fun. Here’s a picture of my grandmother and Lyndsay with my Cousin Sharon and her baby Isabelle.

Click here to see all the pictures from Florida.

So…that’s what I did with my summer vacation!

I found this past weekend that I passed my second CPA Exam! This was the “Regulation” exam, which is about 2/3s tax and 1/3rd law. 2 down, 2 to go!

I felt really good going in to this exam, but over the course of the exam I began to feel like I was doing increasingly worse. By the time I was done, I felt like I had just wasted my time and that there was no way I could have passed. I spent the next day feeling sorry for myself, questioning my life, career path, and thinking that I should turn this ship around before I sank in the middle of nowhere.

It took them one week less than two full months to grade this and get it back to me. It was a painful wait.

While waiting, God (though Bible study and a couple different sermons at church) brought me back around to coming face to face with the reminder that 1) Everything I’ve ever done/had/”earned” has been because God gave it to me and 2) I’m not going to move forward in life with any sort of the growth or success that I’m looking for unless I stay cognizant of the source.

That’s the tension that I seem to live life in most often. It’s the chicken/egg-esque logic argument that comes up around a test like the one I just took. I believe God wanted me to take this professional career path of the CPA certification. So what if I fail? Is it my fault because I didn’t study enough, or I’m not smart enough? Or is it His fault because if it weren’t for His direction in my life, I wouldn’t be doing this?

And back and forth I went for a few weeks, until I had enough and came back to the realization that as long as I hold on to my accomplishments–and failures–and try to “own” them as my own…I completely miss an opportunity for dependence on God in my life.

Oddly enough, the hardest part was giving up my failures. I think I feared that if I ever came to the conclusion that it is God’s fault that I didn’t pass this exam, then I would be either “let down” by Him or that it would show Him as “incapable” of passing a simple test that plenty of people pass every day. And so it just seemed easier to me, on some subconsious level, to step up and take full responsibility for this test, either way…because in my mind, somehow I was avoiding a potentially embarassing moment for God where I might actually lean on him and he might let me down. How nice of me, right?

Yeah, that’s a terrible idea.

I finally quit holding on to the idea that anything I had, past, present, or future, was “mine” or because of anything I was entitled to. After that, things got easier. And then within a week, I finally got my score.

When I got my score and saw that I’d passed with an even higher score than on the prior exam, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt the how behind such a seemingly impossible outcome. There is no doubt in my mind that God orchestrated it according to His plan and purpose. And of course, that gets me excited even more than if I’d passed it because I’d ‘earned’ it.

New feature! If you’re reading post this on http://www.scottcrews.com, Look over on the left, right below my Twitter feed. You can enter your email address and get an email each day that I post a new blog entry. Pretty cool, eh? Of course, it doesn’t replace coming to the site to get pictures, videos, etc. But…it will save you having to come visit the site just to see if I’ve written anything. (Unless you just like doing that kind of thing….)

Of course, the BEST way to do this whole blog reading thing is with Google Reader. I think I’ve written about it before…but seriously, Google Reader is the best thing to happen to blogs since Wordpress. Actually, I’m not sure which one came first, Google Reader or Wordpress….but either way, they’re the best two things to happen to blogs.

Here’s the idea behind Google Reader: Each blog has a “Feed”…basically, a special web address. Google Reader takes those feeds and monitors them. Whenever a “feed” you follow gets updated, Google Reader gets the story. Then when you go to Google Reader, it shows you who has written new posts to read. This is terrific, because it saves you having to go to 12 blog sites just to see that one person has written a new post.

Go to www.google.com/reader to get set up with a Google Account and get the ball rolling. Once you get logged in, click “Add A Subscription” and paste the RSS feed from the blog you want to follow into the space.

How do you find the RSS Feed to begin with?

When you go to a site, if it has an RSS Feed it will probably pop up in your website location bar. (Unless you use Google Chrome as your webbrowser. For some reason, it doesn’t.) Here’s an example of what to look for:

See the blue button here? That’s the RSS Symbol. Click it. (Yours may be a different color, like orange or white)

Once you click it, it turns to this:

This ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/scottcrews ) is what you then copy and paste into Google Reader.

Voila! Do this for all the blogs and news types sites and you just saved hours of your life!

(Most news sites and blogs (except the Drudge Report) typically do RSS too…so you can have the headlines delivered straight to your feed reader. So handy!)