Learning Verses

I have been in church all my life and it has always been greatly emphasized to memorize verses, but I never truly understood how much of a good thing learning verse was. The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about a particular belief of I have that he greatly disagrees with. We have talked about this before, but I was never able to accurately justify it until that moment. My friend, who we shall call him Joe, said something to the extent of, 'every human being does this'. In response to that I quoted a verse right off the top of my head, reference and everything. It was probably one of the most outright acts of Christianity I have done in a long time. I will never be able to fully tell you just how good it felt to have the ability to refer to the Bible like that. Now every morning when I read my Bible I try to find a verse or two that I can memorize and stow away in my heart. Just like the people in my church did I strongly encourage you to memorize verses from the Bible and keep them in your heart, so that you can defend your beliefs no matter what the circumstance.

Frustrating People

It's unbelievable how frustrating people can be and not even care. You know those types of people, they're the ones who laugh when you fail, or give you a hard time with what you believe or how you handle different situations. I deal with a person like that everyday pretty much, we shall name that person Will. Will is that person who twists my believes and tries infuriate me. The only way I have found to deal with Will is to remember that he is going to get what he deserves in Heaven and that God will dish out the punishment and I don't need to worry my pretty little head about it. Even though Will is difficult to get along with most of the time, I have to remember that God loves him, heads over heels in love with him and I need to love Will too, and continue to try to bring him to Christ.

The Painting

One of my friends recently struggled with wanting to know the end and what God had in store for her. I didn't know how to answer since, I don't know the end results either, so I simply gave her this analogy. All of our lives are like a painting with God as the artist. When God paints He paints with slow, deliberate strokes never making a single mistake. We don't know what the picture is going to look like nor can we rush our artist, but the end result is worth the wait. The final picture is a breathtakingly beautiful masterpiece that reflects the God who made and loves each and everyone of us equally and without hesitation and only wants the best for us. Like it says in Matthew 6 31-34, "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Go

In the Bible it says numerous times to go out unto the world and spread the Word of God. Yet Christians everywhere say they're waiting for God to call them. I feel like yelling, "Hello! Christ has called you! It's in the Bible, and what's in there applies to you now as much as it applied to people back then." All Christians are commanded to go, but like I said in retrospect to how many people claim to be Christian hardly any go. Like Kieth Green once said. "This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls on the earth!" What do us as Christians do with that responsibility? We blow it off thinking someone else will minister to those people. But don't you understand? You are the answer to someones prayers. Millions of people, including myself, pray for their loved ones. We pray that God would put someone into their lives that would bring them to the Lord, because our loved ones have shut the door on us. We're praying for you to step up and share your faith with those around you and be a minister. And how could you not? The God of the universe asks everyone to help Him, how can we say no? I don't know. It might be because we can't see God, we can't touch, we can't hear Him. That is faith though, faith is beyond reason. Faith is knowing that God will be with you every step of the way and will help you when you do His Will.

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of then Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."
~ Matthew 28:19

Material Things

Most people feel that they can't live without a certain object, including myself. iPods have been around for awhile, but I hadn't gotten one until this Christmas. Before I got mine I didn't think that I would become overly attached to it, but I can honestly tell you that if I ever lost my iPod I would be devastated. I would not call it obsession, I would just be very upset if I ever lost it. It's crazy how we let material things do that to us. When we die we lose all material things, our iPods, the money, the cars, everything. So, why live for those things when we will only have it for a few years? Why not live for something more, something eternal, something like the God of the universe? Yeah, maybe that's what we should live for, a God who created everything. God has everything in His hands and yet He is head over heels in love with us and wants to have a real relationship with each individual. In my opinion, those two things alone are better than owning any and every material thing in this world.

Communication

Think about this for a second. You and your best friend stop talking and you lose contact. All of a sudden, they're not your best friend anymore. Talking to people is what builds and keeps a relationship, once that's gone the friendship just kinda fades away. However, it's not just communication, it's honest communication cause if my best friend lied to me all the time we wouldn't be best friends for very long. I is sad when friendships end, sometimes it's for the better, but it can still be sad none the less. Oh well, it's just a cycle of life that we all have to deal with.

Procrastination

We all procrastinate, I know I do a lot, and procrastinating really isn't a good thing. For example, say you need to have a paper written by January 14 at 7:30 am. You think, 'Great, I have plenty of time...I think I'll go to the movies.' This pattern continues everyday until it's January 13 at 11:00 pm. and you still haven't started the paper. Now, I admit some people are incredibly blessed and can write a well written paper in that little amount of time, but for the majority of people their paper isn't going to come out that great. If we would all just stop procrastinating and do a little bit of our work a day, we wouldn't be so stressed out the night before something needs to be done and our product would be so much better. No matter how nice that sounds, we all procrastinate, it's just a fact of life, but believe me from those rare moments where I don't procrastinate it really is so much better when we work a little bit a day. So, maybe we should all give that a try more often and see how that works out for us.

Not the way I planned

Going off from one of my posts yesterday I have a little story to tell. When I thought of starting this blog I knew I wanted it to be about what ever pops up in my mind, but I didn't know how much I wanted to talk about God. However, I pushed that thought off and start this blog. I sat at my computer desk and started typing and before I knew it Heaven was typed. I thought that that was fine I mean it's great I found a way to put God in this blog. Then the next blog came and it had a lot to do about God and before I knew it here I am today looking at my posts and most of them have God in them. I think that it's really amazing how God uses us to do His Will, I mean the fact that He is in my blog so much is because He wants to be. It has nothing to do with me, I didn't even want Him in here so much. I love that He is using this blog to do something great, I'm really excited to see where He will take this blog.

HM...

What exactly is love?
I mean, it'll be there for a moment and then disappear and yet in that moment we've never felt so strongly for someone ever before. Love is so strong that it can blind you from who someone really is and you can't see that until it's too late. Then again love can make you feel like nothing could go wrong and that all is a perfect bliss. And then the person who could have sworn you loved turns out to be just one big loser and then you fear to love again, even if the next person is worth it.

How can one go from love to hate?
Then again if someone does that, you would have to assume they never loved in the first place. And with all that happened that seems somewhat hard to believe, nor do you really want to believe it.

And why is it better to have loved and lost then never love at all?
I just can't see how that can be true, either way you must deal with a heartache, but the heartache is much worse when you have lost your love then if they never loved you in return. Which, for those of you who have never experienced that, count your blessings. Believe me, I have gone through both and yes, both are awful, but it took me months to get over loved and lost, and not nearly that long to get over the other.

Just think about it, the thing we all long for most is the one thing that can also hurt the most...that sucks

Life

It's crazy how life never seems to go the way you planned. At the moment that life takes in an unexpected turn people are usually upset by it, but later on it turns out its for the better. For example, say you tried out for the basketball team, and you really wanted to make, and you have been playing for years and you are very good, but you didn't make it. When you find out you didn't make it, you're probably pretty upset, maybe even angry, I mean how could you not make it, you're just so good at basketball. Then a couple weeks later you are completely swamped with work...oh you're swamped with work guess you'll have to quit the basketball team...wait you didn't make it. OH! That's why, God knew how hard work would hit you in the next couple of weeks, it all makes sense now.
We should always take life as it comes and remember that God is in complete control of it. No matter how we think something should happen or how hard we work to try to make it happen that way, God's ways are higher and it is going to happen God's way and it really is better that way.

My friends

I have the most incredible and supportive friends in the world. Today, an awful thing happened that I don't really want to get into and my friends were completely there for me. Through out the day today they asked me how I was doing and if things were getting better and I was just really overwhelmed with how much they care and how much love they have for me. I knew they loved and I knew they really cared about me, I just never saw how much before and I never really appreciated that as much as I did today. I just want to be a friend like that to everyone I meet and I hope that you all want to be one of those friends too. If everyone were like that, then every man would have a real true friend, and I think that that would just be so amazing.

The Start Of 2008

Goodness, I just now realized that it's really 2008. I guess I need to make a new year resolution. So, I think it's okay to have more than one resolution, if not I'm going to have more anyway.
Resolution number one: Be more of a light to people. Show Christ's love more.
Resolution number two: Grow closer to God. Read my Bible everyday and things like that.
Okay, those are my resolutions for this year. I fulfilled my resolutions last year, hopefully I can this year too. I hope everyone had a happy new years celebration and are ready for 2008 and the good things that are yet to come.

Family

I use to never spend time with my parents and siblings, but the last couple of days, i guess a week now, I've been spending a ton of time with them. It's crazy, they've always gotten on my nerves, and that's why I haven't spent a lot of time with them, but the more time I have spent with them the more I start to like them. They really are amazing people who are a lot of fun to hang out with, I guess the only reason I've pushed them away is that in the past we've spent so much time together. This past week though has been a ton of fun and I really do love my parents and siblings, and I am going to try to show that and be with them a little more, which I'm sure they'll appreciate.