Category: Christianity

Relating to Christianity

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Smiling and Smiling

Alright, so I wake up this morning late, not too late though, and take a shower and get all ready to go to school when I open the door to my car and notice that my non-working sunroof has leaked again. I had to run and get a few towels and let them suck up the standing water and such. I’ll probably put some kind of sealant on the sunroof window tomorrow when everything is completely dried and there’s no threat of rain. The sunroof had leaked before but we cleaned out the little drainage holes and all, so it wouldn’t leak anymore. I have no clue what could have got in there to clog it up again. That kind of stuff just drives me up the wall because I just don’t want anything to happen to my car and all. I just need to trust God with it though, my lifes in His hands.

Moving along … yesterday before church I checked out iTickets website for some reason and low and behold … the Falling Up concert has been cancled. While that ticked me off, I waited for “conformation”. I let my mom call the people up while I was at school and all today. The church said they cancled just a week prior to the event, and later — around 7 o’clock or so, someone calls back from the events sponser as to why it was cancled. The reasoning made me very mad. I’m not mad at the sponser, I’m very happy and excited at what they’re doing and hope they don’t give up — I’m mad at this general area. The event was cancled as only 4 tickets — yes only FOUR tickets — were sold. Three for me … and obviously someone else was going. Now sure, that understandable. While I’ve not heard the other side of the story, I did hear my mom’s retelling of why the event was canceled. The local radio stations in the Montgomery area wouldn’t run ads. The local churches wouldn’t sponser it. I guess over all they had no support and word of mouth only works so much.

Now this all brings me to the church. The church is suppose to be a body of people supporting each other. Yet it’s like the church is only supporting itself. It’s not reaching out. I saw so many people at school and when I said I listen to Christian Rock most thought that meant Third Day. Third Day, for those who need informing, is a band from Atlanta. That’s probably the only reason everyone knows them. They have some very powerful songs — but the lyrics are really the best part about their music. A large majority of church today likes to push Christian Rock, Rap, Hard Rock, and etc out the window and DISCOURAGE them from listening to such. Look, the times have changed. The church has to change with the times. As much as I hate the music class I’m in, I’ve learned something … durring the reformation hymns became a part of church largely in part due to Martin Luther and his protestant reformation. The catholic church was faced with a challenge — and they, as well, had a change in music. A vast majority of what Christian Rock entails NEEDS to be in church today. Sometimes we just need to cry out to God — and the word cry there means to shout (Ps. 18:6, for example). I know many songs that hold so much emotion and passion for God that needs to be put into church — and these are deeper than your grandmothers hymns, these are songs full of the hearts of todays youth and young adults. The fact is, people are still listening to secular music when there is much better Christian music focused on a living Holy God. The sad part about it is that parts of the church condem this. The areas that are accepting it are seeing revival.

It’s kind of interesting that the last major revival (the reformation and the revivals that spawned the 400 years or so after it) started with new music, opposition to how the church of the time was run (it’s leaders and the political structure it entailed), and it vastly started with youth and young adults. Martin Luther became a monk around the age of 22, and declared his intolerance of the Roman Catholic church around the age of 34. William Tyndall had his masters degree by the age of 21 and could speak fluently in eight languages (so well that people said it was hard to tell it wasn’t his native language), he was still young at the age of 41 when he died (a maryter).

Okay, thirty minutes later and I’m studying church history. Very interesting. The first Bible every printed in America was in 1663 by John Eliot, which was written in the Native American language. I’ll have a lot of stuff to look at now, this site is packed full of information.

It’s time for bed now …

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Love

Ah, tonights been a good night. Church was good — it was meant directly for me. I got home and started listening to a sermon basically centered on what love is. Again, it was exactly what I needed. One of the things said, which I love was this: love is “freely spending your life in the service of another”. That’s how I’m going to try to start modeling my life more …

I’ve got a few other things to do before bed, so I’m off …

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Long Weekend

It’s been a long, but good, weekend. First I hung out with Jonathan Friday night. We played a few games, and watched John Bevere from Desperation. I enjoyed it. Saturday we went up to Montgomery and watched a movie, War of the Worlds. I wish I had time to review and talk about the things I liked about the movie, but right now I’m really pressed for time. It’s late and I need to get in the best as soon as I can for work tomorrow. I wanted to post what all happened, last night. I couldn’t though because it was so late.

A few things happened this weekend with church and all. First, I talked to the pastor and Uncle Scott about a lot of things I’ve been wanting to share. Second, we’ve got the laptop moved to the back so I can start doing the on screen projections durring church. I talked to my mom for probably two hours last night when I got home, which was around 9:45 or so. There was a lot of stuff shared there too. Last night I told the pastor how I was going to start, also, going to LWWC. Now, when I said that the pastor didn’t like the idea, however, tonight my Uncle told me he’s pretty okay with it after it was all said and done. I just hope this is everything I’m supposed to do. My mom said I’ll do the right thing, so hopefully that’s right.

Speaking of which, my mom the other day wrote some stuff out on a paper for me to read. I still haven’t read through it good enough though, I just haven’t really had time. I had to fix, or I’ve been trying to fix, and get rid of a lot of spyware on the computer my sister uses. It’s loaded with it, so it’s been consuming my free time today. I have a virus scan running now while she sleeps though. I really want to discuss a lot of what happend over the past two days, but I need to go to bed now. I may talk about a lot of it more in depth tomorrow.

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Awesomeness!

Awesomeness. Anyone who’s talked to me online knows I like that word … so, the question, what’s in a word?

Something that I found really awesome at Desperation was a song. I only remember a few of the lyrics. Some of them were: My Savior, Redeemer, My Father, along with a few other names; these names are who God is. I believe this is something we need to remember. This is something we need to learn to say to both God and ourselves. We need to say, to pray, who God is, what His name means. We need to know who God is. He’s all of those things, and should be so much more. Sometimes other things can get in the way of us seeing who He really is. The Bible uses various words to describe who God is, for instance, Jehovah Jireh, which means the Lord will provide (see this page for more names). I believe we need to know these to understand and know who God is, as these names provide us with more on God’s character. These aren’t just names, it is who God is.

Anyway, I’m cutting this entry short. I’ve recently been overcoming a sickness, earlier in the week they were bad, now I just have a cough and pretty much, symptoms of a mild common cold. I’ve decided to post this really awesome shot my mom got while I was driving into Colorado on Wednesday night. The picture to the right is of the last day of Desperation. It was taken durring the praise and worship part of the service. My sister took it, and then made it really bright so you can see it (the flash doesn’t do good with the stage lights on our cameras).

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As you can see, the sun was going down, and the view was just awesome. One thing I missed while I was out there was a mountain shot of the Springs. It would have been boring anyway, without the snow and all. I plan on going back out there sometime, so I’ll be sure to grab one them.

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Eat. Sleep. Worship.

We’re heading home from the Desperation conference now. I’d say we’re sixty or so miles from the Colorado border with New Mexico (we’re going home the southern route). I don’t know what to say about the Desperation conference, so I’m just going to post a little of what happened, and maybe in a few days or weeks I can post everything else.

I’m going to start out with what the local Colorado Springs Gazette had to say about the 2,500 young people from outside of city (and about 1,000 from within the city). There it was on the front page of the metro section, an article about 3,300 young people packed in a single auditorium to worship the awesome Lord Jesus! It was all about Desperation. People from over thirty states came for one reason: a passion for Christ. Reading about it was okay: being a part of it was AWESOME.

Thursday started the conference off. John Bervere was the first speaker at the conference. The bottom line of what he said was this – we’ve got to stop being luke-warm Christians. The hardest people to reach are the people in the church – those that have heard about Jesus, been in church their entire life, yet they’re luke-warm. Jesus said in Revelations that he will vomit these people out of His mouth. This is one of the things that I have a deep passion for, it makes me mad, sad, and sometimes a little discouraged at the lies the enemy has said to this generation and the churches around today. As John Bervere said – we go to church here in America and pray a formula sinners prayer, there is nothing ever said about laying down your life, dying to yourself (Romans 12:1). Jesus never enticed people to bring them into the church. Jesus said he would rather us be hot or cold – not lukewarm. I had heard it preached many, upon many of times, but it was relayed in such a clear way Thursday night. Jesus said he’d rather us be on fire, loving Him with ALL of our hearts or be cold, cold people know they’re sinners. These people are in bars, they make girls, drugs, and anything BUT God their idol – their God. Those in the church believe that just because they prayed a prayer they’re going to heaven, and it’s killing so many people. Luke-warmness is one of the largest killers in America.

The second day was awesome. I met some friends, who turned out to be some very awesome people. That helped both Friday and Saturday go by better (especially during the hours we didn’t have anything to do), hopefully we’ll all stay in touch via Internet. I wish I could stay at the conference for a few more months, but then we’d not really be going out doing what Christ commanded us to do. The war is raging, the youth are the church of today – and we’ve got to lay our lives down for Christ – serving people, sharing our faith with people, and just showing people the love of Christ by the way we live our lives.

I got this awesome shirt that I just have to share, because it’s easily going to be my new favorite! It says: Eat. Sleep. Worship. That’s all it says, there is nothing more on it – just a black shirt. The way we live our lives should be worship to God, and this is the way I want to live my life until I die. Eat, sleep, and Worship!

There was so much covered in those three days. About 300 gave their lives to becoming a missionary, theses are committed young people, and that’s an incredible numbers. I want to reach many people to Christ through the way I live, work, and carry myself. God had so much in store for me, I know. I’ve been just trying to seek his will lately. I really want to move back out to Colorado Springs one day, but right now I’m just going to wait and see if that’s where God has called me. I’ve been considering an internship as well, but I don’t even know if that’s what I’m supposed to do. I believe I’ll start college and go for that for this school year, and then if I feel God has called me to something else, I’ll go. I want to go to ORU after I get my major in computer science. However, I’m not sure if that’s what I’m supposed to do either. It’s just a lot that I’ve got to think about.

I wrote a little of this entry in Colorado, then I figured I would get my laptop back out and edit the entry a little before I submitted it, so now I’m in Alabama, and we’re probably two hours or so from home. I’m ready to get home; I’m tired and ready to go to bed. I have to get up in the morning and go back to work.

Back home now, it’s humid. I already miss my old home again. 🙁

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Tired, Very Tired

Today was one of the busiest days at work. I was on my feet the majority of the day, and I’m tired now. I got home and packed up a few of my things and all. I went out a bought a power inverter for the 23 hour trip up to Colorado Springs tomorrow, and so I should be good to go with that and my laptop and iPod will have juice the entire time up there (yay).

I plan on keeping nightly updates, but I really can’t say a definate “I will” or “I won’t”. I’m not sure if our friends have cable internet (and I probably won’t do updates on a dial up connection, especially not at night). It should be a very faith filled week(end). If I don’t post nighly updates here I’ll try to keep a little journal or log on my laptop until I get back and do a huge 10 page essay on the events that occured that day.

I’m about to head for bed!

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How Much

I went to bed last night at around 2:00AM, so when I got up this morning I was very tired. I probably took a nap today at around 3:00 or so, and got up at around 5:40 or so. Now I’m not incredibly tired, but I probably should get in the bed now either way, but that’s beyond the point.

I listened to a teaching from New Life Church tonight, and a question was asked to this effect: do you want to get rid of all sin in your life, even if it means getting rid of everything you currently enjoy (even stepping outside of your comfort zone)? That can be a difficult question for some people, even myself. Do I have a “pet” sin in my life that I keep to myself and maybe don’t even realize it’s there? If I do, will I be willing to clean it out right away, or will I hold on to it because it’s something I consider “natural”. I know in the past I’ve found things I’ve held on to, and didn’t want to get rid of. Some of these took more than a few minutes to get rid of. I’ll explain one now.

I like music, I really enjoy it. It costs money though. I used to download it all the time (illegaly), but I’ve since been convicted of it — probably about 4 or 5 years ago, actually. I remember seeing it as being very wrong, but I used reasons to justify it (don’t we all use excuses to justify sin). I had tons and tons of music. I would spend hours and hours just downloading anything I could find. When I got rid of it, it wasn’t the easiest thing I’d ever done, but I felt better about it. I got rid of everything I had (except the CD’s I had bought and ripped for my own personal use). I’ve probably not used any P2P file sharing application in about a year now, although it has appeared on my network and I promptly removed it and blocked it. Recently I’ve been convicted of copying other materials, and I’ve had to get rid of them. It’s not the easiest thing, but it’s the legal thing. I now pay for everything I get. If I don’t have the money — I don’t get it. I’m not going to do the “I’ll buy it when I have the money”, we all know that we’ll never actually buy the CD, we’re just using it as an excuse. I, normally, use iTunes to buy my music, although I’ve also used Wal-Mart downloads and ChristianDiscs.com, which are two fine places. There are tons of artists websites that have free music downloads. I have a little over 3,000 tunes — all legal.

I use that to show a sin I was holding onto and didn’t want to let go of. There are other things I’ve had to let go of, and not all of the time is it easy to let go of. Getting back to the question: I want to get rid of anything, no matter what the cost to me. Some things might not can be brought up (or can be seen) unless I get into deep prayer and fasting, but that’s little when it comes to knowing Christ. Christ wants us to not have any hint of impurity in our lives, it can get between us and God. I want to see this generation on their faces before God crying and screaming out to God. God is our only hope.