Blog Updates

I wanted to post a little about some blog changes, so here they are.

I’ve recently updated the theme and layout of the blog so that it looks a little better and a little less plain.  I’ve updated several of the individual pages also (such as the “About Me” page).  I’ve also tried to do a few things to make the blog more search engine friendly.  I plan on all the upcoming posts to be centralized on a topic instead of having three or four topics in one post — which is easier for me, but harder for search engines and the readers.  I’ve changed the name from “What Comes Next?” to “Revolution Reality”, which is the name of the domain, so now it matches!  I’ve started adding more “categories” which should make items easier for people to search for if they have specific topics they want to find (also it’s more search engine friendly).  Finally, I’ve added “Currently Listening To” and “Recommended Reading” on the block to the right side of each main blog page.  These two sections will have updated music that I listen to, and I’ll add books I recommend to the reading section.  I may expand this and review individual CD’s and books on entries and add a link to those posts instead of iTunes (music) and Amazon (books).  Also note that I added the Bible I read to that list.  I recommend everyone check those two lists out for good books and music.

So those are the new changes (and possibly a few others I forgot).

That Doesn’t Belong!

In other posts I’ve discussed removing certain things from my life (mainly being television). Over the past weeks I’ve also got rid of other things, such as certain websites that I went to. Some of these websites were really cool and at the time I enjoyed them. Now that I’ve left them though, I’ve not missed one of them.

MySpace was one of the sites that I removed from my favorites. I also deleted my entire account there. Honestly, it was a spur of the moment thing. I was actually in the bed already and just felt like the site wasn’t really helping my walk with Christ (possibly hurting it — this doesn’t count all the filth on the site), so I got up and thought about it for maybe two minutes and then deleted it. The website asked me if I was sure probably three times, so I had three chances to back out. I deleted my account there about a month and a half ago (I believe), and honestly I’ve not thought much more about it. I had a two or three people ask me if I deleted my account, but other than that I’ve not thought nothing of it. This weekend, a family member commented on my removing my account. This person wasn’t on my list or anything, they had just been watching it (or so I guess haha). I’m happy because it confirmed that it was right to delete it. The only social site I am a member of now is Facebook — and I don’t spend near as much time on it as I did MySpace, plus it’s cleaner and a little more mature.

I’ve since cleaned out my music and got rid of anything that wasn’t Christian. Some CD’s weren’t music, but I believe I broke over 25 to 50 CD’s this year. I’ve deleted other things that I’ve kind of held on to also, such as chat logs that are years old (really, I didn’t need them either). I’ve deleted all my chat logs since about a few weeks ago (that were modified) and I got rid of all the huge logs. I’ve done a lot of house cleaning and reorganization (I like to be organized though).

Make Disciples, not Converts

Church goers, Christians, members of a congregation — some don’t know the basic beliefs of being a Christian.  I’ve saw it, somewhat, first hand today in class.  A girl thought that the Trinity (God the Father, Jesus the Son, Holy Spirit) was a hierarchy (or thought that traditional, orthodox teaching, believed this).  I know this, many people in the church knows this … but do new Christians?  How are they supposed to know if no one shows them?  Maybe sometimes we focus too much on saving a person and less time on actually discipling them.  I don’t believe any one pastor or church or leadership system is responsible, but there should be some accountability.  There’s more to being a Christian than just knowing that Jesus is the son of God, was murdered and brought back to life three days later, and was born of a virgin.  There’s so much more to that.  Some of it’s theological, some of it isn’t.  It just all comes down to this: lead them to Christ — then disciple them so they can repeat the process.

Reach Out

Eventful. Different. I enjoy randomness and change. I ate my first meal today at McDonalds (Spicy Premium Chicken Sandwich) — it was okay. Two o’clock I went to the church — I helped install the projector screen and I moved the microphone to the back where the computer is (so we can record the messages to the computer). I came home and my dad fixed something up that we never had before — it was good, filled me up. They left and gave Jenna some at work (or that’s what they said they were doing). While they were gone I got a call saying someone we know, his dad committed suicide. I guess I’ve never thought I’d know anyone in this time period who’d do that. I suppose I was wrong. It’s just so sad. One shot is really two shots. You’re not just killing your body, but you’re pushing yourself into eternity in an instant. I’ve just been hoping and praying the family gets over this easily and that as much evil the enemy meant to come of this, much more good will come out of it. To say the least, today has been a very different day (on many fronts, I suppose).

My church is having a get-together tomorrow night. Play games and socialize. I guess there’s not much to say until after the event though … I do like hanging out with the church family though, great fun!

My Glorious is one of my favorite worship songs. I bought the “Our Love is Loud” Passion CD from iTunes since they were two dollars off. Overall, that has been the best Passion CD ever released, in my opinion. Speaking of Passion, Passion 07 registrations starts next week (well, they’ll sell out within a few hours, I’d guess). It says the official site will be up next week. They will probably do a few awesome videos that make me want to go even more … maybe I’ll get to go this year.

Common sense. You know it’s going “out of style” when you do a search for it and you see ads on how to get “common sense” on eBay. For those that have no clue what common sense is, read this nice definition. It’s true that I don’t have common sense on everything (no one really does). I mean, if I worked on cars since I was a kid, sure I’d have “car common sense” and be able to diagnose problems better than someone who spent four years in college learning all about how to fix it. It’s the same way with everything, though. It’s bad, really bad, when someone who has eight years of book sense think they know all about something yet don’t know anything about how to actually diagnose a problem. Sure, there is always a ten-step manual that can be followed, but honestly, it could be something not even listed and someone with common sense would pick it up first — not the one with a ten-step program on how to diagnose the problem. I guess I’m just posting this to say that, in college, try to get lots of hands on experience with what you’re learning (real world, not lab experience). It’ll help in the long run. It’ll be bad the day jobs start requiring common sense and college education is just a “want” (not required). If I ever started a business I’d like to do a common sense test … college is good and dandy, but I’d want people with sense for the job.

Respect. Youth. It bothers me deeply when I see an adult (obviously greater than 25 to 30 years) does not respect youth and younger adults. Some just think they’re better or know it all. Others just want someone to beat down, so they find someone who doesn’t matter: youth. I don’t know everything. An adult who’s 98 doesn’t know everything. Would these people ever send Timothy out today? Or would he have to go to college before he could be any help to Paul? Paul obviously thought very highly of Timothy (or else he wouldn’t be referenced so often by Paul, nor help Paul in writing and sending the letters to the church’s). 1 Corinthians 16:10 says tells the church of Corinth to “treat him [Timothy] with respect”. Now, am I against adults? Of course not. I normally get out of situations where adults think they’re better than youth. Youth are told to respect those in authority (which is good), but those in authority need to also show respect.

Men in the church. The other day when coming home from school, I was listening to the radio and they were talking about why, there aren’t as many men in the church. They made the argument that one reason is that church is seen as a feminine thing and, for the most part, only tailors to the females. They brought out and excellent example of how there was once a church with a prayer room that was decorated with ribbons and such. The church wanted to reach more guys, so they asked them to come in and completely remodel the room. What they did was remodeled the room with items such as Celtic shields and the like. When I think of the remodel, it can have a deeper meaning and actually be exactly what a prayer room should be for — spiritual warfare. Finally, after the remodel, the guys were more “at home”, but the females loved it so much they couldn’t even stay away. There were many other examples too, but this was the one I liked a lot.

Randomness

I’ve not written in my blog much this month — only two posts!  That’s not good.  I guess I can attribute it to (aka: blame it on) school and slight hole I’ve been in here lately.  I’ve had several papers due this month.  Spring Break is in two or three weeks … I’m kind of ready for a week of not worrying about school.  Over the past few days I’ve been trying to catch up on bugs and features for E-Blah, it’s gone alright.

I don’t have that long, so I don’t want to dwell too much about those things.  The Passion Worship CD’s have made it to the iTunes home page.  This is awesome news.  Currently the latest preview from Passion ’06 has made a solid #5 for total album sales.  I’ve been reading the 286 Blog, very interesting stuff.  Reading it makes me want to go to Passion ’07 (in Atlanta, GA!!).  I need some people to go with me though (hotel and all).

Jason Upton is an awesome worship leader! I’ve known of him for a while.  I’ve just never really listened to him since about a week ago.  All his CD’s are on their shoutcast radio station. I’ve been playing that (it’s added along with the other five radio stations on my playlist — ChristianRock.net, The Night Watch, One Jesus, ChristianHardRock.net, CMRadio).  While on the topic of music, I found that Family Force 5 released their CD on iTunes earlier than the main release date.  I bought it … it’s so diffrent.  Randomness is good!

In The News

The news hasn’t held my interest as much lately as it normally does; however, I’ve still been trying to keep on top of the most important items in the news.  I have been keeping track of Iran and the entire track they are taking with obtaining nuclear weapons.  Today it was publicized that Iran has began its uranium enrichment. For those that do not know, uranium enrichment is one of the key factors in developing nuclear weapons. The Iranian President has called for, as most of the Islamic countries, the destruction of Israel. To put a long story short, if something does not change soon – there will be no more “diplomacy” talk. It will be war talk. Ariel Sharon ordered on December 11, “to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran” (source). Nonetheless, things are being set in motion that once are in motion cannot humanly be taken out of motion.

In other news, the man still bitter about losing the election in 2000 has gone to Saudi Arabia and bad mouthed the United States. Fortunately, what he said was not even correct. Unfortunately, these kinds of lies only stir up Middle Eastern Muslims into rioting and murder. Just to think: people wanted him as President of the United States. Are these people being paid by other governments to just badmouth the US? Do they think it makes them look good? My, I sure hope not. These people do not look even close to “good”.

A Day Late

It appears that I haven’t posted to my blog in two weeks or so.  I believe that is a record.  I’m not sure, but what’s it mater, I’m posting now.  A lot has been going on over the past few days, so I have a reason (or do I?) for not posting.  At the beginning of this week, I had two papers to write (one I just edited, but it was still work).

On Thursday, I helped at church with building the little place where the computer is going to be located.  When I got home afterwards, the remaining parts of the church computer were waiting at the door.  Therefore, I took a while, built the computer, and installed everything it needed.  I have to admit, the parts that are in the computer – I have never worked with four of the pieces of hardware.  I built my computer with secondhand hardware about a year ago (in March 2005, I believe), and at that time, the Socket T (775) was not even out yet.  There was not anything different since I have installed countless Socket 478.

Continuing in the subject of computers, I have seemed to be working on increasingly more computers lately.  I enjoy working on them and helping people out.  I wish I could do a start up computer repair shop around here.  Never know, I guess, it could happen.  There seems to be more activity with working online with Internet work lately too, and it has helped monetarily.

I finished The Visitation last week.  Author Frank Peretti put a lot of work in creating a relatable story of an ex-pastor who had problems with the church – someone whom changes from more of a bitter person to one of humbleness and dependence on God at the end.  The main story incorporates another story of the ex-pastors younger life starting from his early days as a Christian up to college and meeting his wife all the way, up to where the story was to that point.  The ending was not exactly something expected either.

In class on Wednesday, we discussed a story that we read (actually I’m not entirely sure where we’re at on the syllabus, so I didn’t read it).  The story, Harrison Bergeron, is a great example of how lame the world would be if political correctness lead the American people.  As the story puts it, “everybody was finally equal”.  If someone did not have a handicap to make them equal, the government made sure you did (as not to corrupt the others).  Intelligence was like an ignorant bliss.  While I thought the story was not that tasteful, there is some truth in it.  Political correctness is one of the major terrorisms of our time.  Do not offend people?  If you offend someone it is like you are evil and looked down upon.  There are fine lines between intentionally offending someone, don’t get me wrong.  However, in life there are times when people are going to be offended (sometimes speaking out of love to someone about a problem they’re having that’s sinful could offend someone, for example).  The truth is, with political correctness there’s this false sense of “peace” – but there’s no peace.  Instead of overfeeding someone while they’re around, people just do it when they’re not around.

A few people out there would like to see just what America would look like if liberals ruled it (putting “ruled it” lightly).  This story by Kurt Vonnegut explains exactly what America would look like – an ignorant dictatorship ruled by rulers who control their subjects every move, idea, thought, feeling, emotion … put simply: their entire life.  Thankfully, I think a few people are seeing how they can pull their handicaps off and get out of the liberal mindset.  Unfortunately, there are still many people with their handicaps … and it seems like some enjoy theirs a little too much.  I just hope they’ll see the light one day …