David Westerfield

Late Have I Loved Thee – Augustine

On March 28, 2016

Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee! For behold Thou were within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou hast made. Thou were with me and I was not with Thee. I was kept from Thee by those things, yet had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness: and Thou didst send forth Thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: Thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for Thee: I tasted Thee, and now hunger and thirst for Thee: Thou didst touch me, and I have burned for Thy peace.

Augustine, Confessions, Book X, Ch. XXVII

The Entrance, Suffering and Sovereignty of Christ – Holy Week

By David Westerfield

On March 21, 2016

In Theology

This is the time of contemplation and remembrance in the church calendar when we consider the intentionality of Christ in pursuing the cross. The love of God is magnified and displayed in its brilliance at Calvary: the complete and total orchestration, pre-planning, ordering, and sovereign, loving providence surrounding the events leading up to and fulfilled in Christ’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection on behalf of His people, unto the ultimate restoration of all creation.

Machen, The Forgotten Libertarian

By David Westerfield

On March 1, 2016

In Politics

http://fee.org/articles/j-gresham-machen-a-forgotten-libertarian/

“Everywhere there rises before our eyes the spectre of a society where security, if it is attained at all, will be attained at the expense of freedom, where the security that is attained will be the security of fed beasts in a stable, and where all the high aspirations of humanity will have been crushed by an all-powerful state.”

David Phillips on Justification from 2005 (MP3)

By David Westerfield

On February 20, 2016

In Audio, Theology

Classic Dave, preaching on Romans 4 and justification …

David Phillips, A Life Remembered Ten Years Later

By David Westerfield

On February 19, 2016

In Personal, Theology

How does one sum up the trajectory-shifting influence a single gospel-focused mentor can have on your life? How does one sum up a mentor whose aim is to point you to Christ, the one through whom the entire universe was spoken into existence, the one through whom redemption came and the entire cosmos would one day be made right again?

How does one sum up a person who points others to Christ through the scriptures, the content of which was articulated over the ages by modern giants of the faith, resting on the shoulders of other giants of the faith through church history, going all the way back to the Apostles? How does one sum up a man whose aim was to bring you the gospel, not merely for salvation, but growth in the faith? It is indeed an inestimable gift, a rare jewel.

Imago Dei, Idolatry and the First Commandment

By David Westerfield

On February 19, 2016

In Theology

Our rejection of the Imago Dei (Image of God, God’s thumbprint of His nature on our being) is fundamentally a rejection of Him, and we’re worshipping creatures by nature, and therefore must and will worship something.

Robbing You of Joy

By David Westerfield

On February 12, 2016

In Technology, Theology

http://www.inc.com/amy-morin/science-explains-how-facebook-makes-you-sad.html

“They don’t recognize that it’s actually robbing them of joy.”

“Robbing them of joy.” That phrase stuck in my mind as I read this article about Facebook and the endless scrolling we can find ourselves addicted to, and how it sucks the life and joy right out of us. There is tons of spiritual application in this, especially during this Lenten season of self-assessment, confession, repentance, cleansing, and joy-renewal in the full scope of Christ’s person and work on our behalf.

Migrating Business Data Connectivity Services (BDC) from One Farm to Another – SharePoint 2013

By David Westerfield

On January 23, 2016

In Technology

In troubleshooting the migration of Business Data Connectivity Services (SharePoint 2013) from one farm to another, I had to do quite a bit of research to discover the exact path necessary to get the objects properly exported and then properly imported into the farm. I initially was able to import all the objects without permissions, but wanted to grab permissions as well so I didn’t have to redo all of that work. So here is a rundown of the steps needed to get your BDC objects exported from one farm and imported into another.

Migrating the Managed Metadata Service

By David Westerfield

On January 8, 2016

In Technology

After performing some trial and error with migrating the Managed Metadata Service databases and attempting to attach the databases in another farm in hopes it would just come up, I came to the conclusion that this isn’t the best option. These are my steps for migrating the Managed Metadata Service from one farm to another. In my situation, we had an ESF farm setup where several services were hosted and are primary farm connected over to those services via a remote connection. I was tasked with migrating those services over to the primary farm to simplify the architecture. So these steps involve dropping the remote connection and re-creating it in the primary farm.

The Gamification of Consent

By David Westerfield

On December 22, 2015

In Technology

In what is one of the more frightening uses of cloud computing, big data, data science, and data analysis, China has been working on what can only be described as the gamification of consent (a twist on the title of Edward Bernay’s book The Engineering of Consent). Via a new social media scoring system that rates your submission to the party line (though currently only running in numerous pilotprojects), the communist government will give incentive rewards for “appropriate” behavior in the light thereof, and take those rewards away for a dissenting score. This has huge implications as it relates to the study of mass psychology and the use by governments of tools like this to manipulate and coerce their populations into submission.