Category: Various

Over the course or life, there are many difficulties — whether in the choices we make, places we go, or the people we meet. Sometimes, though, life can have those times when much seems to be a mess, but little is in actual disarray – on the outside, anyway. Some people embrace life while others let it simply slip away, with my purpose what so ever. The actual purpose these people have in life is in total disillusion, they have no idea what choices they should even try to achieve that day, or even if they should live at all that day. There are many diffrent paths to take in life, that’s why life is so awesome. Why do some people live in disillusion, though, while others live complete, whole, lives? I really wasn’t sure 7 or 8 years ago, as I was living in the disillusion. I remember when I first, really, turned my life over to God. I didn’t pray a prayer. I didn’t set foot in a church. I actually didn’t do much of anything.

It was a summer day, probably in June, when I got mad at my mom (I think I backtalked her, actually). My granny was in Colorado visiting at the time, and while I was in trouble, and I’m not entirely sure what happened next … I do remember what happened that night. My mom, my dad, and my granny were all hovered around me on my parents bed praying for me. After they were done she told me to say I love Jesus (or something to the effect). I wouldn’t do it (I’m not sure if it was pride, or what … it’s still hard for me to say it though). She told me I should tell someone by the end of the night (I’m not even sure what all was said, though). I wasn’t too happy with my parents, but my granny was there and when she was off to bed, I remember catching her and saying those three words. My life was changed forever. It wasn’t a prayer, it wasn’t a feeling, it was simply an “I love Jesus”. I’m not even sure how everything else fell into place, but over the course of that summer I changed. It definatly wasn’t overnight, but I changed. I remember going to an overnight lockin that November (I’m not sure, but I think it was over my birthday), and that was the time I really experienced God for the first time. I’d gone to church all my life. I knew the stories, I knew parts of the Bible, but I didn’t know God.

It’s years later, and I still don’t know God like I want to, but I know that there is power in his name because he changed me. Sure, I’ve messed up. I said those three words and meant them with all of my heart. It wasn’t easy, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. But the change was everylasting. Will saying those three words save you in and of itself? Of course not. But that night I believed in my heart and I confessed who Jesus was. Have I been perfect since then? Of course not, but I know one who is perfect and he will live forever and ever.

The first part of this (and the title) was written the day of my English final, and for some reason I decided to go into what I went into.

So what have I been up to? Well hmm, where should I start. I met a girl, Lynette, and we went to see Chronicles of Narnia (the best movie of 2005, no matter what those nasty critics say) last night. I had a good time. Of course we went and ate, and we went to Starbucks afterwards. She’s an awesome Christian. She goes to my sisters boyfriend, Mitchell’s, church.

Right now, I’m just … I don’t know, I think I should get going.

I’ve got little time to update this, but I need to update it. I’ve not updated my blog in a few days.

Yesterday I went up to schedule for classes (I decided to come home, then go back up to Montgomery — wasted gas, but not as much time). I thought it was going to be good, but it turned out not. Tallassee High School sent AUM my transcript durring March, that was good then, but they should have been told (by AUM?) to send it again after I graduated. My account was locked and so I can’t register for classes until I fix it. I tried logging in tonight from here at home and it doesn’t let me (I think I tried too many bad PIN numbers and it blocked me). Now I have to call them to unlock that. It’s unfortunate, but I’ll recover I suppose.

I rented The Pacifire last night. It was a pretty good movie. They really aren’t making many really funny movies anymore … and sexual jokes aren’t funny. They’re lame and make the movie bad. On that note, I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith for the second time. It was a good movie the first time, it was okay the second time. The only problem I have with the movie is the sexual content. Why put that? It doesn’t help the movie sell anything. If I want a movie about sex I’d rent a porno. Lame. Also, the “Christian” family they portrayed was uncalled for as well. I guess I maybe shouldn’t be so mad about that though, because hey … that’s how so many “Christian” families act anyway (the “party” and they made the guy seem dumb, like he wasn’t very educated). Stereotypes tick me off though. Without those two elements the movie would get an excellent rating. It has a good message though: stay married — even through thick and thin.

Today I was on the interstate and some older people were in a truck (with a state government tag) and they’d get in front of me and go really slow, then I’d pass them, and they’d do it again. It happend for probably 10 minutes. It made me laugh, so it’s nothing I’m complaining about … I thought it was funny how they were getting enjoyment out of it (I guess?). I wasn’t mad or anything, but to show them I understood … right before I got off on my exit I speed well ahead of them. So that’s like my random personal story of the month or something.

I bought my LCD monitor. It’s a Samsung. It’s a 19 inch 8ms. It should be here Friday. I’m ready to move on up. I wonder how much diffrent it’ll be compared to my 17 inch.

E-Blah is getting a new hard drive on the server, or might, due to a “failing” hard disk. So it’ll go down for a while tonight. Had to back everything up. It came to about 143MB’s for my little area of the internet over there. FPServer (where my blog is located) still has a good hard drive and is backed up to it’s spare hard drive every night so that nothing can happen to the blog or site.

Well, internet just died. It’s back up now. It’s time for me to hit the hay though.

Today began with shoes clanking up and down the stairs. It wasn’t that bad, I just didn’t want to get woke up so early (it was 9:30 or so). Once I got up, though, I found I wasn’t that tired — even if I went to bed at 2am. I finished my math final (the take home part). It took me quite a while to finish it. I bought a new domain today — JustinOsborne.com — it’s not that important, though.

Our pastor and his wife came over tonight for dinner.

I have ideas about all sort of things, and I’m loaded with my thoughts right now. I may just be totally random. ChristianRock.net is doing a promotion (the first one since I’ve listened). They’re giving away an iPod Nano and some CD’s and stuff. Interesting …

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now and later in my life. It’s like everything is so quite, like I’m walking through life without direction sometimes. I mean, I have direction, but it’s not a roadmap. It’s like a foggy road that you can only see the next little streach of road. Maybe I know what I’m supposed to do. I have this little test thing I took a while ago (like 4 years ago now) that says what I appeared to be gifted in and such … and it says this: “Your primary motivational gift is: TEACHING; Your secondary motivational gifts are: PERCEPTION and ADMINISTRATION”. Teaching and Administration is pretty straight forward. Perception, though, says that “… have a strong inner prompting and ability to perceive what is right vs. wrong …” and “… are willing to terminate existing relationships to remain loyal to truth”. This also has a thing that says areas I may be good at in the church; the top four being, “Administrative Board Chairman” (70%), Leadership Roles (68%), Intercessor (68%), and Teen Group Director (64%). The “secular” roles are: electrical work (87%), computer programmer (84%), Philosopher (80%), and “Quality Control/Inspector” (75%). There are several more pages in the report. What’s scary is this thing seems to know me like a book.

This “report”, of course, isn’t meant to be “you must do this” or anything and isn’t supposed to be “hard” evidence. The report is, however, very accurate. The top two secular roles that were listed were just what I like to do. The church one, though, I haven’t studied much. I actually didn’t know what was on it. Mrs. Jennifer, the pastors wife, said something about getting me to talk (hehe) and then said I might be a preacher (or something like that), just joking of course. I simply said that I’m not denying it. For the past few months (and years?) I’ve been wanting to go into youth ministry (#4). While not a “preacher” per-se, I do want to help youth. I do think I’ll probably end up teaching from time to time (if not full), though. I’ll have to trust God a ton there … I mean, I don’t even talk now. I’ve complained for so long about looking 14, but I’ve also thought … when I’m 30, I’ll look 17 or so. So hey, it’ll be all good. But I’ve also been thinking over the past month or two … maybe there’s another reason. My previous youth pastor didn’t look his age. Hmm …

I’m stumbling over words, and probably none of that makes sense. It makes sense to me before I write it, but it’s coming out all wrong. So I’m changing thought.

I finished reading 1st Kings today. Yet another very, very interesting book. I learned a lot from just sitting down and spending the time to read several chapters at a time. Tons of good stuff in those books. Very interesting too.

So, it’s 1 AM. I think I’m heading off to bed.

This past week has been good. I went in and presented my project, it turned out alright. I was very nervous and read most of it. It was probably very evident that I was nervous, but oh well.

Church was good, Mrs. Jennifer spoke on feelings vs. truth. I got a good bit out of it … but haven’t really took the time to really focus on it like I should. On Thursday Pastor Chris came over and we discussed the church website for the most part, and then I converted all the messages from church to MP3 form and published them on MinistryTalk.com’s Church Broadcast. I’ve been really working on completing the entire MTalk.com Church Broadcast pages. I believe I’m satisfied with the general look of the site now. Next thing to do is get more churches involved, but that just takes time.

Tonight I’m going to eat with my granny. My aunt is down from Huntsville this weekend for the first time in several months. I may go to a movie up in Auburn tonight, although I’m not really sure right now. The only thing in the theater right now seems to be crap. I’ve not paid any money to the MPAA in months now (that’s definatly not a bad thing).

Anywho … I’m bored and know of nothing more to write about right now. Sometime between now and last post I turned 19 …

This evening my family went up to the city sponsered “Harvest Festival”. It was alright; of course I didn’t have as much fun as Jonathan, it was still alright. My church had a booth up and so we went to see how things were going … which was going well, of course. I kept my jacket in the car … and with the temperature being — as of now — 45 degrees, that wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I was cold (I wore a short sleeve polo). It wasn’t too bad though. The dance team did a few songs, that was good — but they always do pretty good. Of the songs I remember, Mirror by Barlowgirl was the best. I always knew the song had a very good meaning, but I just never looked at it the way they played it out.

Before, or maybe right after the dance team started I found myself thinking back over how when I was in highschool. I’ve been really thinking today about how I’ve judged people. It’s not just one person, it’s everybody. I just have judged them. All I can do is ask for forgiveness. It’s stemed, I’d say, from the whole “I hate this city” concept … but that doesn’t justify my judgement. There’s a sign on a church that says something to the extent of “Rationalising one sin makes two sins”. It’s a deep though, and I’ve been thinking about it. When you try to make one sin “okay” because you rationalised it only makes another sin.

Yesterday my aunt was over and told me that a little computer (internet) place was looking for someone who knew stuff about computers. I’ll probably go up there and see if they’re interested. I’ll see I guess ….