What's it Gonna Be?

If you are familiar with my previous posts you may remember me saying that I do my best writing, or most of my writing after 2 a.m., well this is no different. As I am writing this it is 3:27 a.m. and I felt like it was time for another post. So without any further ado I will just jump right in.

            Have you ever felt like you are just living? Like you are just here on this planet fulfilling no purpose at all? Maybe you feel like you have a purpose but what you are doing and what you want to do are 2 very different things. If any of these caught your attention this post is for you.

            I was driving home from where one of my friends was working the night shift, and for lack of better words, I was feeling like crap. Here I am, going to a Christian college studying to become a minister and I feel like I am so far away from God. You want me to tell you why I feel this way? Its because I am far away from God; my sin has driven me from him. Everyday I try so hard not to sin and I do it anyway. It is my own selfish desires. If you think about it, that is what sin is, our own selfishness. It has been said that when we sin we are saying that we want immediate gratification that sin offers rather than wait on God. My selfishness has slowly pushed me away from God yet again. Every night I pray for God to help me, sometimes I have been so far away that I even tell God that I don’t know if I am sorry. You may think that statement is a bit far fetched, but in reality, is it? Saying that we are sorry for our sins and actually being truthful about it are 2 completely different things. If we are truly sorry then we will turn from our sins. Take a relationship for example. If you do something that upsets your significant other then you apologize to them and you do not do it again, or at least you try your absolute hardest not to. If you turn around the next day and do it again were you really sorry in the first place? My guess would be no. So with that said, I pray that God helps me overcome the sin in my life. But will he help us if we don’t do our part? Doubt it, seriously.

            Some days I just feel like I am here, just living and not doing what I am meant to do. To be honest I do not know exactly what I am meant to do or just how I am going to do it. What I do know is that I should be representing Jesus Christ with everything that I do. Every breath should be about him. You want to know the truth? I don’t do it. I fail miserably every single day. I get very down on myself about it and I almost feel like I am depressed. I want to do the right thing but every time I want to, this little voice comes in and says “go ahead, cheat, it’ll be ok just this once.” It is driving me crazy. My life is so hectic right now, I have school and friends and work and anything else you can pile on to make my head spin. I feel bad about not pleasing God with my lifestyle. And I try to so hard, I just fail so much. I feel God’s conviction very heavily on me and I want it to stop. I am at a breaking point where I have to choose. (before I forget, please pray for me about this)

            So anyways, back to my ride home where I was “feeling like crap.” I was listening to a christian radio station and honestly just wanting some kind of sign to come on the radio to show me that everything would be ok. At first there was nothing, but then, a song I had never heard came on. The song was about someone going through the same situation. The felt like they were just living and wanted God to come make everything better like they knew he could. I cannot remember the words for the life of me but it was exactly what I needed to hear. Some may say this was a coincidence but I believe with everything inside of me that God put that song on just for me. There is a song by Casting Crowns that I do know the words to. The song is Stained Glass Masquerade. The words say “are we happy plastic people, under shiny plastic steeples, with walls around our weakness, and smiles that hide our pain?” I have been that person for a while now and put on a front in front of people so that they wouldn’t know I was messed up inside. What I forgot is that the church is here to help; not the building- the people. But that’s another story in itself. 

            For too much of my life I have been just a bystander, someone who knew the right thing but did his own thing, someone who casually walked around like life was no big deal. I spoke about a few weeks ago and I spilled my heart to the kids in my youth group. When I was in high school I knew of God but never could anyone tell. The thing that burdens me the most is that I feel like I strayed my buddy from God. I told him about God but never lived up the lifestyle that I preached on. I believe the expression is “practice what you preach.” And I didn’t practice it at all. After I spoke about how I don’t have a quiet time every day with God like I should, a girl in the group came up to me and challenged me to sit down everyday and have one and after a month she would message me and ask if I had done it. I wish I had kept up with it. My own selfish desires got in the way again. I have only missed a few but at the same time everyday I miss one it would be easier for me to tell myself I could miss the next day. And everyday I missed I grew more apart from God which is where I needed to be.

            I thank that girl for challenging me to do one everyday. I have grown spiritually through the days I did spend time with God. ( the stupid thing here is that I still would miss a day despite my spiritual groth) The second day of my month-long challenge I read something that stuck out to me very much. John 3:30- “he must become greater; I must become less.” This was John talking to his disciples about Jesus. He was saying that he must let go of everything in himself and his selfishness in order for Jesus to become who he is suppose to be in John’s life.  Here is an illustration for what he was saying. There are 2 jars sitting on a table, both halfway filled up with water. On one jar there is your name. on the other jar the label reads “Jesus.” With this illustration we must assume that there is no other water in the whole planet to fill either jar with. The only water is in the 2 jars. One of the jars has to be filled, there is not in-between. We can either take the Jesus jar and fill our own jar or we can take our jar and give it all to him.   Incase you don’t see where I am going with this, we must become nothing so that Jesus can become everything. We have to give him everything of ours. We have to give him our past, our present, and our future. In that jar lies all of our past mistakes, everything that we have done for good, and anything else you can possibly think of. We give our sins to him because he has already died for them. He already endured the pain and suffering for everything we have ever done and will ever do. We have to pour our jar into his. We cannot hold onto anything because if we do we will always be selfish and will never get where he wants us to be… Maybe this illustration was a bit childish but hopefully you get the picture. I can honest say by writing this I have come to a few realizations of my own about how I should live.

            Like I have said before, these posts are more for me than anything, but in the mean time if you get something out of it then praise be to God! Let this be your prayer today, “God, I am sorry for everything. I want to be your servant. Strip me of everything and leave only you. I know I cannot do it on my own. Help me through everything and give me the strength to say no to my selfish desires. Help me to remember that you are there and you have something planned for me. Amen”

Please continue to pray for me, I would appreciate it very much. I know I have to be strong and only rely on God to help me through, however he chooses to help. If you have any questions the same rules apply here- message me, I have a facebook, or any way you would like to contact me. I hope you have gotten as much out of this as I have. Thank you for reading and God bless you!

Soup or Salad?

As some of you may know my life is a constant thought. Some times I go days thinking of one thing and other times I don’t think of that at all. Lately I have been struggling with different things and have not been as close to God as I would like to be. When I write most of my posts normally I am in one of 2 places; either as close to God as ever, or far away. Either way he lays things on my heart to think about and blog posts are born. Some people think they are the complete reason for some posts, but in reality all but maybe one have just been the thing that gets me thinking. With all of that being said I will go ahead with my post and just ask you to please pray for me. Lots of things are going on right now and some decisions have to be made.

            Have you ever been in a restaurant ordering your food and the waiter/waitress asks you whether you want soup or salad? For many, this decision may be simple. If you are a salad person then you can almost never go wrong with a salad because they are pretty basic and the same at every restaurant. Some are soup people though and often are fans of change and trying new things. I have been thinking about the simple question that we may not put very much thought into and overanalyze it in my head. The main point that sticks out to me is that if I chose salad, I will never ever know how that soup was. I will have missed out on that soup forever. Sure you can get it the next time you go to that restaurant but what are the chances of it being exactly the same? On the other hand if I choose the soup what if there is something wrong with the soup and I get sick and die? Or what if the salad would have been the best salad I ever tasted? My point here is that every decision we make ultimately affects the future. We can never go back in time and try it out, until we master the space/time continuum, that is- like that will ever happen.

            How many life decisions do we over think or not think enough of? How often do we just coast through life doing as we please and also how often do we go out on a limb to do something that we never thought we would? Every decision we make has some kind of positive or negative effect. Lets say I choose soup one day because I am feeling lucky, knowing that I am completely missing out on the salad, and also assuming we cannot order a separate salad. I am taking the risk that the soup can possibly not taste good at all/make me sick. When I make that choice there is no turning back and I am aware of the consequences. No matter what happens I am stuck with my decision and must live with it. Life decisions are much like ordering dinner. Lets take following God for example. When we choose to follow and obey him things are going to change. We have chosen God and not ourselves/the world. We are aware that we may lose friends, jobs, family, etc and we are also aware that it is not going to be easy, but in our hearts we know that the reward will be much greater than anything we can ever imagine.

            In life we have to make decisions. My main point of this entire post is to get others to realize that their decisions should not be taken lightly. But regardless of the decisions we make things are going to change. We must follow our hearts to do what we feel is best for us and most importantly follow God because if God is in our hearts He will make the decisions that will better our lives.

One last note. Please pray that I will let God have his was in my life so that I will not worry with the future and for him to give me peace about things that trouble me the most. Thank you for your time and I appreciate your prayers. Until next time, God bless you. 

What Do You Expect from God?

How many times have we sat in a church service or in front of a television/computer screen and heard a preacher talking about everything that God is going to protect us from? Too many times preachers and evangelists talk about all the good God will bring us here on Earth. We all hear about everything good God is going to do for us, but what does it actually mean that He is going to protect us? Does it mean that he is going to keep us safe, keep our job, (I know no one really wants to hear this but...) keep our family safe? Preachers who are trying to convert the lost into Christianity often paint a picture of a perfect life with Christ; a life where everything that you ever wanted becomes yours. I don’t want to name any pastors specifically but one televangelist in particular preaches that if you accept God into your life all of your worries will be over. He also says that anything you ask for will be given to you. Have we ever asked for something from God and we haven’t received it? I have. I know right now in this post it seems like I am trying to say that God isn’t who you think He is or that He simply is not going to help us out. I guess in a way you could say that I may be telling you God can possibly be different from what you know and expect of him. I have been burdened to get this message out and I hope to actually give this message to the next place God allows me to speak. This is a message that I think everyone, especially teenagers who are facing tough decisions right now and are facing a hard time, should hear (or in this particular case, read). Too often we get discouraged because we think that God is not here for us because bad things keep happening to us. Maybe this post is for you!

            First I am going to start off by saying that we need to be fully satisfied with God. And you may be thinking, “I am totally satisfied with Him.” For us to be fully satisfied with God we have to understand that He is in control. He is sovereign; He rules the entire universe including the heavens! To be fully satisfied with Him we also have to realize that bad things are going to happen to us! He never promised us that everything was going to be great all of the time. Too many times we think since we are children of God’s we think we are not subject to hurt and pain. Evangelists have fooled us and now we expect to live a perfect painless life. I think one reason many people “lose their faith” and “fall away from God” is because of the deceit that we have been fed by the ones that teach us. One thing evangelists have right is that God wants us to be happy, and I only agree with this statement partially. I believe He wants us to be happy but not the happy that worldly pleasures bring. We should be happy because of the joy of knowing that nothing here on earth matters besides our relationship with Him and furthering His kingdom.

            Why do you think that God wouldn’t want us to be happy because of the things here on Earth? I believe that is because we know that we cannot take anything from this world when we die. Think about it for a second. You have died and are laying in your casket in a church somewhere with a preacher standing over you speaking to your loved ones. What is in your casket? You! You and maybe some nice clothes your family wanted to be buried with and so that they can remember you that way, and even the clothes don’t matter at all! When you leave this world it is going to be just your soul. Your soul does not carry bags; you don’t leave with a moving truck. Once your life here is done that is it. So what really matters? “Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.” That verse is Matthew 6:20. The verse is pretty self explanatory. Store your treasures in heaven because things here on earth come and go. The Lord gives and He takes away. It is all His anyway. Think of the story of Job. It is simply too long to explain the whole thing but to make it short it is a story of Job and his faithfulness to God. God allows Satan to tempt Job to sin and curse God by taking away everything that he had, from his family to his livestock to his health. Job never sinned by cursing God for taking the things away from him because Job knew that it was all God’s to begin with; actually, he praised God still! He knew that those things didn’t matter. Only his faithfulness to God did. If we could all be like Job we could see things in a completely different perspective.

            So why shouldn’t we worry about tomorrow? Why should we not care about what we have here on earth? Its because God gives us the joy of knowing He has us in his hand. If He has us in His hand then why do we still hurt, why do we still lose things that we hold dear to us? Because God saved us. He saved us from the fear of a spiritual death. This means that because we have faith in Him we are not subject to destruction, not worldly destruction, unworldly destruction. He is keeping us from going to a very real place called Hell. God sent His only perfect son to die a brutal death so that our sins could be paid for all so that we could have eternal life by just believing in his death and ressurection. What more should we have to worry about? People who are of this world hold their possessions very close to their heart. They worship their possessions. Everything they do has to do with money and making themselves happy. It is sad really that people have to hold things like this so dear, but that is literally all they have. The seek happiness in worldly pleasures and items because they don’t have anything else. We, as followers of God, should not be like this. I am not saying it is wrong to own nice things and to do things that make us happy because it is not. What is wrong is letting those things control our lives and if that happens we lose our sight of God and when we lose our happiness and our possessions we turn to God and ask, “why?” “Why would you do this to me God?” Sometimes if we lose things dear to us it is simply a test of our faith; god can be asking you, “what is more important, Me or your junk?” God will be around a whole lot longer than anything we can buy.

            Many times our lives become filled with hurt and sadness. We lose our boyfriend/girlfriend, job, house, car, friends, parents, children, etc. When things such as these happen we get angry at God or either we lose our faith all together because we feel He is not with us anymore. We just simply have to remember: He gives us things and He takes them away all for a reason. This reason may or may not be known to us, but nonetheless they were not really ours to begin with. Everything we have has been given to us through His gracious hands. If you are reading this I am willing to bet that you are far more fortunate than others on this planet. We have to realize that our possessions should not be our number one love in life. Until we understand that God is keeping us from unworldly destruction rather than worldly destruction we will continually be mad at God for taking the things he has given us away. I thank God for every minute I get to spend with the things He has given me because if He decides it is time for them to go they will go and I just have to be happy for the time He allowed me to spend with it. As hard as it is dealing with losing something that you love you have to remember that God truly is in control and He knows that He is doing, even when it looks like He doesn’t. Until next time, remember that our God reigns!

Take My Life

It has been way too long since my last post and for those of you who follow me semi regularly I am sorry. I have been busy doing a whole lot of nothing since I have been home for Christmas break. I have had plenty of good ideas for posts but in the moment haven’t felt as strongly as I do about this one coming up. Like always I will give you a little bit of background to where this post is actually coming from. I just got back from hanging out with my friend at work. He works the night shift at a hotel so we watch tv shows and movies for most of the night until its time for me to go home to bed. Tonight when I got home I lie down in my bed and prayed. Right now in my life I have lots going on mainly inside my head so the average person would not even know it. Pretty much decisions. Many, many decisions I need to make and as I prayed tonight I asked God to take care of them for me. As I was praying a song popped into my head. “take my life and let it be, all for You and for Your glory. Take my life and let it be Yours.” The song actually became my prayer. As I literally sang to God my prayer in bed I began thinking about the song.  Have we ever really thought about the words to this song? I know you are probably sitting there thinking, “well duhhh, its pretty self explanatory!” Oh is it? Many of the times I have sang this song has been at a camp towards the end of the worship section of the service and the song has been carefully placed to get the most affect. We have all sang the song at the top of our lungs, eyes closed, arms held high, possibly even tearing up a bit because of the magnitude of the words we are singing. As I think about all of the times I have sang those words I thought, “why have I always had to come back and make this my prayer over and over again?” Making this a daily prayer can never be a bad thing, if we truly mean it. This post is my break down of this simple yet powerful chorus.

            Lets start with the first word, take. Do we actually know what take means? If not, I Googled it for you. Many definitions came up for the word take. The first definition is to carry out, as in take action. Since the pronoun in the chorus is capitalized, we can assume God will be doing the taking. Another definition is lead. God will be doing the leading. “To get into ones hands” is the next definition. God will be putting us in His hands. In the sense the word “take” is used here is the same as to “take a cookie.” If you take a cookie you are taking the cookie from where it was to wherever you are now. Incase this doesn’t make sense yet please stay with me.

            The next words in the chorus are “my life.” Unlike “take” this can only mean one thing. Your life is your life. Not your parents, neighbor, friends, relatives, teacher, etc. you are the one who is in control of your life. No one else controls it (not saying that you shouldn’t respect/obey your parents, elders and so on). Lets put “take” and “my life” together. Take my life = carry out my life, lead my life, pick up my life. Just in this first part of the chorus you are already telling God to do something very, very big. To TAKE YOUR LIFE. Taking of lives can mean many different things and for most people it usually just means to kill/end a life. If you think about it like I do, it actually makes more sense than any other way I could explain it. “God take my life, end the life I have now” is what you are saying so far. Hope you are still with me because it will become clearer very soon.

            “And let it be” is the next part of this chorus. I don’t want to insult your intelligence but just to be clear we are going to go over what each of these words mean. “let” means to allow something to happen. “it” is referring to YOUR life. “be” is one of those words you know what it meand but you probably couild not give a straight definition for if you had to so I googled it as well. “Be”, by definition, means: to have the quality of being, to be identical to. Can I say WOW!?! Lets put all of this together. “and let it be”- allow my life to have the quality of being…/allow my life to be identical to.... . if we put everything we have learned together we get. God put my life in your hand, allow it to be…/God carry out my life so it can be identical to… . Still following?

            Next we come to “all for You and for Your glory.” Do we all know what “all” means? Google says “all” means: completely given to or absorbed by. So completely given to or absorbed by what? That brings us around to the “for You and for Your glory” part. Completely given to or absorbed by God, for His glory; not our glory but His. What does glory mean? My trusty google says glory means: a state of high honor. So: completely given to God for Him and for His high honor. Lets put it all together yet again. God allow MY life to be for YOU. Let My life bring YOU glory. Take my life and let it be Yours.

            For many of you scholars out there this has probably been the most redundant thing you have ever read. You are thinking, “ yes, yes I knew exactly what that meant, I didn’t need to waste my time reading this!”  Well I am not quite done. In order for God to take our lives we have to surrender it to Him. In other words, in order for him to pick us up like a cookie and take us somewhere else we have to let him end the one we are living in right now. This is a chorus of salvation that we as Christians or non Christians can sing to Him anytime we feel we are not in the right place. To live our lives we have got to lose the one we are living in now. We can sing this chorus everyday for the rest of our lives but until we truly mean it we won’t get anywhere. We have to lose/end our life-it has to be taken from us (by God), we have to allow God to have His way with our lives so that we can actually live for His glory and to bring great honor to His name. So many times we have stood in a crowded worship room, hands held high, tears running down our faces, screaming at the top of our lungs for God to come take our lives and let them be His.

            For so long I sang this song. I always wanted Him to take control of my life and to make my life about Him and less about me. Until tonight I didn’t put 2 and 2 together; that I had to actually tell Him to take it but I also had to ALLOW Him to take it. He can do it alone, but He is not going to. We have to put forth the effort to change our lives and to make Him first before he will give us a hand with it. Think of it like this. Your teacher at school isn’t just going to give you the answer to that hard math problem before you try to figure it out. The only difference is that we have God to help us. And if we try hard enough he is going to help us through to where He wants us to be in our lives. We have to remember one thing: as we sing this prayer it will mean that He can and will take our life, it will no longer be our life but His, and it will be about His glory and not our own. Once we understand this we can finally allow Him to have our lives and actually surrender to His will for our lives. It is such a deep thing when you think about it that when we mean it we are actually telling God that we have full confidence in Him to take our lives and to mold them into what He wants and that whatever we want does not matter.

            Like always I hope I didn’t lose anyone along the way and if I did drop me a line on here or facebook or wherever and we can discuss this further. I also hope I was not too redundant because a certain someone told me I repeat myself a lot in these, so if I did I apologize. Until next time, God bless you

Testimony

Lately I have been doing some more thinking. I know I know, I think too much. It may be entirely true, but on the other hand I believe that my thinking is God communicating with me. To some this may not make sense, but for those who do get it, it makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? God is a lot of things to me. First he is what moves me, what allows me to breath; literally, spiritually, and physically my savior! He is my conscience. He is my insight. Anything good that comes from me, He is responsible. Though my mind takes control of me and my sinful desires overcome what I want to do, the Lord is what I truly want to follow and live like. And by the way, this is another long one, sorry!

            Here at school I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about what my actual testimony is. At first thought my mind was blank. I had no idea what my testimony was. I have heard so many stories about amazing transformations from lives of sin. One of my best friends gave his testimony Wednesday night at a church and his message was powerful. He had grown up in a Christian home and at a Christian school but never really understood Christianity, or the love and grace of Jesus. He saw Christians as the hypocrites that they were being and eventually became bitter towards Christians and even closed his heart towards hearing the Gospel. A long story made short- He hit rock bottom and God revealed himself to my friend. (I do not want to ruin his story for you because it will move you) He turned his life around and, from the song written by a friend of his, is “changing the world.”

            With his testimony I became very confused about my salvation, my “come to Jesus moment”, and my testimony. Until now my testimony has simply been about the day I got saved. I have told everyone who has asked that I became saved when I was 10 years old, which is when I first realized I was indeed a sinner in need of God’s saving grace through his son Jesus. The pastor read from the book of Matthew and explained the story of 2 gates: one leading to death and the other leading to Life. To spare you the details, and boredom, I will make my old testimony short. I accepted Jesus’ call into my heart that day and I was baptized. That is pretty much it. Not much of a transformation story is it? Exactly! I don’t think I was truly saved that day. I think my time came a few years later at a Christian camp when I accepted Christ and actually tried to follow Jesus and do His will. Though I did not remain completely faithful then, that was my first attempt at actually trying to change my life through Jesus.

            This is my real testimony. This is what really happened. Nothing is made up. Take this or leave it. I have been ashamed for a long time of what I had done, but not anymore! I came to my senses and God asked me why I was ashamed of my past when he has forgiven me. He revealed again that I should not be ashamed before men because the One I will answer to has already forgiven me. He has forgiven and forgotten, so why should I worry?  Anyway, here goes nothing…

            My entire life I have grown up in a Christian home, in church, and with a Christian family. I attended Sunday school as a child and I was involved in anything and everything a church could possibly have for me.  I was told about Jesus time and time again. My mother talked with me constantly about Jesus. My grandmother is probably the most spiritual person I know. She literally cannot have a conversation without ending it with something that the bible can relate to that subject. By the age of 8 I knew all about Jesus, how he died on the cross, how he rose on the third day, and how he died for our sins. I even knew that everyone sinned and that God was the only perfect being, along with His son Jesus. What I didn’t really understand was that salvation is a little more than just saying the prayer. Yes, Jesus forgives your sins, Yes all you have to do is ask and they will be forgiven. Does that mean you are going to Heaven? Honestly, at this time I am not 100% about the whole “faith without works” argument. One day I hope to gain an understating about that. As of right now this is what I do know. God sent his son Jesus to live a perfect life to then die for our sins on the cross. He died in advance for our sins, so technically our sins were paid for even before me were alive. We just have to ask for forgiveness. I also know that if we are truly sorry for what we have done we will do our best to keep from doing those actions again. Just as we would do for earthly people, we are to do for God. The thing is, we should be even more sorry for sinning against God. We are to be so sorry for the things we have done and so happy for the grace He has shown us that we ask for forgiveness and never turn back to those sins again. We are to remain in Him. If we remain in him we are in His love. If we are doing His will for us then we are truly saved and I have no doubt in my mind that we will go to heaven if we remain in His love and do His will. The whole last part of the paragraph I did not understand until fairly recently. You will be amazed how much you will learn by simply reading His word. I have truly found out so much that I did not know, that many preachers just “forget” to tell you. For my whole life I had known about God and I may or may not have been truly saved (I believe I was not), but the fact is I knew about God. I actually knew, not the “knew” when you just think something may be true, I actually knew that Jesus was the Lord over this world and that out of love he dies on the cross for me. But what makes that a bad thing is that I still just did whatever I wanted. I was ashamed of telling people about Him and how He made me feel and how much He is worthy of every bit of anything I could find here on this earth to give. I only once told someone I knew about Him, only once! And the only reason is because I was coming back from a “D-Now High” and the theme thing that weekend was “friends don’t let friends die and go to Hell.”  I told that to my best friend and he accepted Jesus in his heart that day but since then he has slipped away. I am completely convinced that it was my selfish actions that kept him from staying in God’s grace. (Hopefully he will read this, and for that I am sorry man-I Truly am!)

            Not sure if I properly ended the paragraph but I noticed how long the thing was getting so I cut that one off just to start another one. Anyway, so basically I knew about God but denied him any chance I got, whether it was by my lifestyle or by my words I denied to the world that I even knew His name. For some reason, which is beyond my comprehension, I did not want people to know about God. Maybe its because I was not really saved but I am not completely sure about that. If asked I would say” yes I am a Christian” but in no way, shape, or form could anyone tell. There are so many verses that describe exactly how I was acting so just look up Romans 2; verse 24 explains how I was acting, except I was 100 times worse. I never was a really bad kid. I had always been taught right from wrong and I knew the consequences of wrongdoing, here on earth. Just a side note: I want to be a pastor-possibly youth pastor- and I don’t have one of those stories about how I was high and drunk and wrecked my car into a family and spent several years in prison where a fellow inmate taught me about the Lord (I am not saying at all that there is anything wrong with that because every story has the power of God’s grace to your life, just mine isn’t that story is all I am saying). I was never a really bad kid, by the world’s standards. I did not party much. When I did party I would do things I wasn’t proud of the next day. Though I was never an alcoholic or drug addict, every sin is the same before God. The one and only, perfect God is so holy that all sin, even the sin we see as small here on earth, completely disgusts Him. I broke every one of the Ten Commandments. I didn’t realize I had at the time, but Jesus explains all the commandments and elaborates on each one. I had broken every single one of them in some form or fashion. With every Law I broke God was right there telling me it was wrong, convicting me, making my stomach ache with that feeling you get right before you are going to do something you know you aren’t suppose to do. For a while I had convinced myself that I was saved and I was going to heaven but I was not remaining in Him, I was not seeking after Him. No change had been made in my life to show that He is Lord! I convinced myself that I was a Christian but really I was just making Christians look bad. And the worst thing of all was that I actually knew He was there. I knew that He was sitting there watching me make His name less holy among men. I was the very reason that atheists will never believe in God. Why would they believe in something whose followers were not living the way they spoke and preached about? I can tell you I wouldn’t! I hate to know how many people I have caused to stumble from Christianity,

            Luckily, one day I began to seek after God. I began reading my Bible. I began finding answers and I began realizing that I was not any better than anyone who had been an addict, because I was an addict myself. I was addicted to me! I was addicted to making me look good, to trying to be popular-which I never fully succeeded at, by the way! God pulled me to my senses; He revealed to me that he was all that mattered. Not one thing here in this world matters. He tells us to not store our treasures here on earth because moths and rust will destroy everything, but not in Heaven! I was disgusted with my self because I knew all along what to do I just didn’t do it. In my eyes that is worse than living a horrible life and then having a salvation/transformation experience. At least the horrible life was before they knew God-before they fully understood everything that I knew this whole time I had been doing my own thing. Ignorance is understandable but what I did I cannot even think of any word to describe besides stupid (to the extreme). Every year I would go to a Disciple-Now weekend and hear the same stories from the same kind of preachers and they were all the same to me. I was confused because I always had this correlation in my mind between sinner and what these people were doing. I always just figured I was in the light because I wasn’t as bad as them. The thing I didn’t realize was that I knew but didn’t do anything about it. Faith without action is dead faith. You can have faith without action but what good is it doing? The action that comes with true faith is a bit hard to explain. One thing I can say about action is that faith is the action of belief. You can believe that the parachute in your backpack is going to open, but faith is actually jumping out of the plane. I thought iwas better than the ones who had done all the drugs but in reality my sin was exactly the same. If I would’ve had true faith I would have had the action that the true faith brings. I would have been living right instead of wrong (yes I realize that was quite the elementary sentence, but it sums up what I had to say nicely). We were put here on this earth to first accept God’s call into our lives and then to spread the Gospel to everyone. Our lives are to be a ministry; ministry and missions should not be our job but our lives.

            For so long I thought I knew God. Yet I was ashamed to let people know about Him. I wanted to be “cool”. Little did I know that you can’t ride the fence for long and one day you’ll have to pick sides. I picked the wrong side. I picked me instead of Him. Thankfully God set me down and showed me the error of my ways. I finally chose to listen to him. I don’t actually know the day I was truly saved because my Christian walk has been more like a rollercoaster. I have had the highs and lows, flips and turns, and even started back at the beginning a time or 2. To tell you the truth I don’t really care what day it was, the date isn’t going to matter one bit in heaven. As far as I am concerned I could say the day was today. God knows the day and I know the day came and I also know that now I am on the right path. Without a doubt in my mind I know that I am in God’s will. Through prayer and time spent in His word I have finally come to peace with God and I am more than happy that I finally quit doing what I wanted. My journey has been a long one and if God is willing it will probably be a lot longer (though I defiantly would not complain if He were to take me Home). I hope that my story has inspired you to receive God’s call into your life and stop running from His will. I wish I had not run from Him like it did. I can tell you I definitely would not have wasted a year and a half at a community college for the degree I wanted when I was running.  My blasphemous past makes me sick when I think about how I destroyed the Lord’s name the way I did. What really makes my stomach hurt is when I think of the fact that I KNEW! I KNEW about God! Please don’t be like me. If you are reading my posts its because God led you to my page. Please listen to the words he has spoken through me and accept his call. Until next time, Thanks for reading, God Bless you!

More Than Another Textbook

Well it has definitely been a while since I have sat down with the intention of writing for my audience of probably only 2 or 3 people. Either way, for you 2 or 3 people who may or may not be reading this I believe you will get at least a little something from this post today. Since I don’t really edit my writings on here, rather I just put on paper what I feel the Lord has placed on my heart, I cannot make any promises at this time whether or not this is going to be a long post or not. As it stands right now I am not planning on being long “winded” in this particular post and also do not plan on citing any bible verses. The irony of the fact that I am not citing verses comes from the topic itself. Today I have been doing a bit of thinking. Thinking about what, is what you are probably thinking. For those of you who have read my previous posts know when I have been thinking, that immediately means that I am going off on some tangent that is nowhere near the place I started. And if that is the case this time I do not apologize because I feel very strongly that when I remain in God he can, and will, use me to speak his words.

            As you may know, I attend a Baptist college and every day the Bible is used on this campus in one way or another. “One way or another?” you say! Yes, indeed. The Bible can be used in things other than its purpose. First I think it is necessary to explain to you the purpose of the Bible. The Bible was written so that we, citizens of Earth, can read and actually see God’s word. Through His word we can know Him. To know Him we have to constantly seek Him. The Bible is how God communicates to us. His word IS the Bible. Everything that the Lord wants us to know is inside of it. If I am being a little redundant than my point is being made clear! I want for people to understand this. The only way to know God is to be in His word. That is the only way we can grow closer to Him, to read His word. Maybe that got my point across and if not maybe I can get it across better later in this post.

            Here at a college centered on the Bible, sometimes we can use it in a way that is not actually its true purpose at all. Sometimes the Bible becomes just another text book that we only read before out test on our New Testament or Life of Jesus classes. Sometimes we only read it in the few minutes before class because we forgot to the night before. So many times we do things like this and think there is nothing wrong with it. Personally, I have done this my share of times and for so long thought that I was actually doing good because I was reading the Bible. I was reading it, but I wasn’t deep into it-trying to find out the true meaning.

            This is coming straight from the dictionary of me, so please don’t criticize my personal definition. My definition of a textbook would probably be something along the lines of “a book used for a course or class, that contains information about a specific topic or topics that would benefit the reader in the course.” How kind of benefits does this mean? Benefits on the test would be a good grade, which is helping you pass the class. If we are using the Bible as a textbook, here on a Christian campus, are we really using the Bible for the right reasons. In a way, we are abusing the Bible/taking it for granted. We are only using it to pass our classes and to get a good grade. If that is the only reason we are opening our Bibles are we actually here for the right reason in the first place? I am not trying to cast judgment on anyone, because I too am jut as guilty as the next, but my answer to the question would be that we are not here for the right reasons. Too many times we allow school to come between God and ourselves, even here. If we put God first then we wouldn’t even need to “cram” in the Bible before class, because it would already be in our hearts.

            With all of that said the Bible should be a textbook. But not for school! It should be a textbook for out lives. The course we are enrolled in is life. We need to read the Bible to grow closer to God so that we can really know Him. As we begin to know Him and how awesome He really is we will start to gain knowledge of how we should act in the world. We must seek God first. There is nothing that is more important than putting Him in the front of our lives.

            Though having the Bible as a textbook in a classroom is not what it was intended to be for, having It as a textbook in our hearts can benefit us more than any book we purchase for our classes. I hope I made my point clear today. If not, you know what to do! Until next time, Seek Him First!!

He is the Vine, We are the Branches

Warning: This Post Will Be Long! I taught last night on the vine and the branches and now since they have heard what I had been led to say, I will express my words to the world. I am not completely sure how the whole thing went but I must say, for the one or two people that expressed their gratitude, I am content with the words that I said because the Holy Spirit spoke through me to at least one person. With that being said I do not want to sound like I am putting myself on a pedestal; I am simply giving God the credit for the words he allowed to be spoken through me. Anytime I seem to be bragging, though sometimes I do and do not mean to, I am actually trying to give God the credit because I can do nothing without Him. Just for the Record I recommend you reading John 15:1-17.

         John chapter 15: 1-4 summed up is: Jesus is the vine, God is the gardener. For those who have never done a lick of gardening in your life, me, I did some research on how you are actually suppose to grow, prune, and keep a grapevine alive.(Jesus refers to himself in this passage as the “true grapevine”) Most videos and articles I read helped me out to spiritually understand this concept. When you think about it, Jesus knows everything and to fully understand his parable of the grapevine we must know about the earth and how it works. When we understand the earth we can grasp further the fullness of God.  The videos and articles said the best way to grow a grapevine is to have a wire running parallel to the ground above the vine for it to grasp on to for strength. After the vine reaches the wire it grows along the wire stay off of the ground. The vine has branches that branch from it, hence the name branches. The branches are you and I. We grow from the vine and, as said in the scripture, cannot grow apart from the vine.

         Lets get a mental picture going here; picture a vine growing from the earth, up to a wire, across the wire, and then branching out down toward the earth. Now picture the wire being heaven, where God “is.” The earth is still earth, the vine is still Jesus, and the branches are still us. The vine is the connection between heaven and earth, God and us. Jesus is God in the flesh, God here on earth. We are to remain in Jesus to remain in his love. I went to a summer camp this summer and one of the days’ themes was REMAIN. I did not actually fully grasp the whole concept of remain until I dove down deep into these verses. We are to remain in Him, Him being God/Jesus. How could we expect to remain in Him if we are not remaining in his word, his teaching to us. Every single thing we need to know is in the Bible and it is just sitting there for the taking. It literally wants to be read because It is the Word of God. It is one with God. God wants us to know him more, the only way we can do that is through his word.

         In the next section of the passage, Vs 5-8, we go a bit deeper. Yet still not as deep as we will by the time I conclude. Just as a reminder, Jesus- Vine, Us- branches. One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the fruit we are to be producing. I looked up the definition of fruit and got several answers but a few stuck out to me the most. Fruit- 1: Ripened, seed bearing part of the plant when fleshy and edible; 2: Fleshy material covering seeds; 3: ripened reproductive body of a seed plant. As I read these things I began to understand more and more about this “fruit” I am to produce with my life. Jesus said if we remain in him we will bear much fruit. This basically means that to benefit anything from Jesus we have to remain in him. Remaining in him is obeying his commands and staying in his word. If, and only if, we remain in Him we can bear fruit. I know by this point you are probably wondering why I haven’t really told you what fruit actually means, spiritually. I could tell you now but I think it is better saved for the end of my “sermon.” Again, in order to remain in Him we must remain in his word. His word is His communication with us. How can we expect to know Jesus if we don’t even know his word?

Remain is hammered into my mind again when this passage talks about how a branch severed from the tree cannot grow. It says that the branches that have been cut off are gathered up and thrown into a fire. Last night as I taught about this story I read part of Ezekiel 15. The first 4 verses of this chapter is talking about branches of a vine being cut off and asking what they are good for. In 4 verses the root word “use” is used 4 times in several different ways: useful, useless, used. The main point here is that the branches cut from a vine are completely useless and are not good for even fueling a fire for more than a minute or two. The branches that are cut off are our sins. God does not cut us from the vine He cuts our sin. To grow again we must start over with repentance. When you cut a dead branch from a vine, or tree for that matter, you make sure you cut all of the dead stuff off. God cutting off the branch is Him cutting off our sins, throwing our sins into the fire where they belong. Our sins are absolutely useless and God removes them when we ask for forgiveness to allow us to grow again. Still following me? I hope so! I know, I know- I told you it was going to be long, stay with me though it’ll be worth it.

So what have we learned so far? God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, and the dead branches are our sin. Our sin gets cut off to allow us to grow. That’s the basics of what I have discussed. Now we will talk about the pruning. Pruning is when you cut off some of the good parts of the plant in order to yield bigger parts of the plant when harvest time comes. In other words, cutting off good stuff so that you get more good stuff. I was going to wait and see how long I could keep the meaning of fruit from you in order to tie it in at the end with a bang, but now seems like it will be a good place. Fruit is our usefulness to God. Fruit is what we do for the kingdom. Using what He gave us to further his kingdom. To get lots of fruit on a plant, sometimes you have to cut off some to get more. If I fully explain the whole process of pruning I will not only confuse you I will confuse myself, as well as make this go a lot longer than it actually should. For that matter I will just explain it like this: when you cut off some of the good stuff to get better good stuff you are really just cutting a place the plant is giving nutrients in order for it to spread the nutrients to the rest of the plant, making fruits in that part of the plant bigger. (hope that made sense)

With all that being said we are now moving on to my favorite part of the message Jesus spoke when he told about the vine and the branches, Vs 9-17.  Here Jesus drives in REMAIN more and more. I love it! He starts off by saying that He loves us as much as God loves Him. Pretty self explanatory, huh? Well just incase you don’t fully have this in your head- God loves us as much as he loves his son! I don’t have kids but I could image how much I would love them, God’s love for Jesus is infinite times more than that. And if you could come up with a number there then that is how much God loves us as well. It truly is amazing. Jesus again says to remain. He says if we obey his commandments we will remain in his love. He obeys his father’s commandments and so should we. Obedience is the key to remaining in his love. He tells us these things so that we can know how to receive his joy. This joy is beyond no other and can only be found through him.

Jesus then goes as deep into love as anyone ever could. This is when he makes his command for us to love each other.  Jesus says there is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend. Think about it for a second. There is no greater love than for your friend to lay down his/her life for you. How would you feel if your best friend jumped in front of a bus or even took a bullet for you? (I hope these things never happen to you by the way) I know Jesus knew what he was doing when he worded his speech. He said that to then tell us that we are not slaves to God, but we are friends of God. A slave doesn’t know everything about its master, but God told us everything he knows-making us friends of him. When Jesus was talking about “no greater love” he was alluding to his own death. For those of you who are Christians or either simply know either Old Testament prophesies or Biblical literature, you probably know that was crucified on the cross. But, do you know why he died on the cross? Not legally why, but spiritually why? He died to save us from our sins. He was sent as the Lamb of God to die for us, HIS FRIENDS! He died for his friends, to save us from the penalty of our sins. 

Jesus told us to then go out and produce lasting fruit. What is fruit? It is usefulness to the kingdom of God. Our fruit is what plants the seeds of Christianity into the hearts of non-believers. Our fruit puts what God wants into others hearts through us. (if that even makes sense to you) Jesus said that whatever we ask in his name will be given to us. This is where some people begin to doubt faith and God al together. They see this verse and say, “well I want a new BMW”, and when they don’t get it they think God isn’t listening or simply is not there. There are two things being done the wrong way here. First, the Bible says not to test God. Second, if we are really asking for something in His name we won’t be asking for something foolish like a new luxury car. We will be asking for something to further his kingdom, because, if you haven’t found out by now, is the only thing on this earth that matters. King Solomon was talking to God one day, in 2 Chronicles 1, and God asked him what he wanted. Anything he asked for would be given to him,. Solomon asked God for wisdom and knowledge so that he could govern God’s people correctly. Solomon told God he realizes that no one on earth is actually qualified to lead God’s people, but with God’s help with wisdom and knowledge he could do it a lot better than he could on his own. God gave him what he asked for and also gave him many worldly things because he was so selfless with his wants.  We should be like Solomon and ask God for things we can use to further his kingdom, not further our pockets/closets/etc.

I know right now it probably seems like I am far from the branches and vine. Really Jesus wanted us to see much more than just the illustration of the vine. He wanted us to think about it and apply it to our lives. When we understand how gardening is done and how plants grow we begin to understand a bit more about how big and awesome God is. He knows how the plants grow that how he was able to compare our lives in Him to something as overlooked as a vine. Many times we overlook Him in the world and don’t pay much attention to Him, but regardless he is always there; always there to help us through our every need. All we have to do to receive his blessings is to remain in his love. To remain in his love we have to love each other. Loving each other is the key to remaining. He remains in us, his friends, by loving us unconditionally(all the time, no matter what!!!). If we love him we must love each other because he loves us all. So, remain in God and he will remain in you. Bottom line: remain! God Bless!

p.s.- I hope there are not many grammatical errors or anything confusing in this. If so, like every other post, you can contact me on here if you need to.