Second Sunday in Advent

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I took a Lay Servant training class in my church. It was a class to teach people to give better sermons for the times when they might fill in for their pastor. Though I have no plans on preaching anytime soon, it did give me a few good pointers. In my blogging, I would like to be able to write at least one a week, if not two or even three, and sometimes ideas are hard to come by, so it gave me the idea to look at the lectionary that some pastors use to base their sermons on.

A lectionary is a book or listing that contains a collection of scripture readings for worship on a given day or occasion. Which the previous blog post, Assignment: Just the Right Time, was based on the lectionary reading for that week. I had used 1 Timothy 2: 1-7 and wrote a rather good five minute sermon. And again, thought I don't plan on preaching soon, having a weekly five minute devotional or something like that could be fun.

So I decided to look at the lectionary for the second Sunday in Advent. When I was reading it I felt a theme in them, one that I thought might be useful to today. The four readings were Isaiah 11:1-10,
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19, Romans 15:4-13, and Matthew 3:1-12. I found Psalms to be an interesting one for me.

1 Give your love of justice to the king, O God,
and righteousness to the king’s son.
2 Help him judge your people in the right way;
let the poor always be treated fairly.
3 May the mountains yield prosperity for all,
and may the hills be fruitful.
4 Help him to defend the poor,
to rescue the children of the needy,
and to crush their oppressors.
5 May they fear you as long as the sun shines,
as long as the moon remains in the sky.
Yes, forever!
6 May the king’s rule be refreshing like spring rain on freshly cut grass,
like the showers that water the earth.
7 May all the godly flourish during his reign.
May there be abundant prosperity until the moon is no more.
8 May he reign from sea to sea,
and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.
9 Desert nomads will bow before him;
his enemies will fall before him in the dust.
18 Praise the lord God, the God of Israel,
who alone does such wonderful things.
19 Praise his glorious name forever!
Let the whole earth be filled with his glory.
Amen and amen!

I look at this as more than just a song by Solomon, this seems to me to be a prayer. And now that his election cycle is over, we have many new leaders and some staying the same. Instead of fighting, we should be uniting. We should be praying for our leaders. If I were the psalmist today I would have started off "Give your love of justice to our president, O God, and Righteousness to our Supreme Courts. Help them to judge your people in the right way and to treat the poor fairly."

This should be the prayer Christians have. That whoever the leader is, that he is fair, just and does what is right for the people. I know there are Christians on both sides of the line. But the truth is, it truly doesn't matter who is leading us. in the end we belong to the Lord. He is our leader. But no one wants a hard and terrible time, so we should keep praying. Not just for the leaders, but for the rest of the nation as well. Maybe the psalmist would continue like this:  "Bless our lands to be prosperous and fruitful. Help our leaders to defend the poor, rescue the children who are in need and bring justice to those who would harm them. Lord teach this nation to fear you again. May the changes be new and refreshing and bring about an unrivaled prosperity to our nation. Praise the Lord God, who alone can do such wonderful things. Praise His glorious name forever and let the earth be filled with His Glory."

Either way, as we go into the holidays here, Hanukkah starting on the 24th, Christmas on the 25, Kwanzaa starting on the 26th, or Festivus, or even Bacon Day (if that is your thing(which bacon is delicious so even if your a vegan its ok to eat bacon on this day, it doesn't count because its your duty to eat it.)) we should be praying for, uniting with, loving, and protecting the people that we call neighbors in this country. How nice it would be if people just replaced their hate, indifference, or intolerance for one month with love.

Dis\Encourage

We are binary. We, as in people across the world, fall into 2 categories: 0 or 1. We are either a no or a yes. Off or On. Negative or Positive. Good or bad. Encourager or discourager.  Life is a line of binary code that strings along countless numbers until the sum of the line equals us. This is me: 01000010 01110010 01101001 01100001 01101110. Well it's not me, but it is my name. I am pretty sure I would be a lot more numbers than that.

What sets many humans apart is that we can see our 1s and 0s. Most of the time that is. Some people think they are 1s but in reality they are a 0. Not a 0 as in a loser or nothing, nothing with any kind of bad connotation to it. But they think they are a 1, let's say this 1 is an encouragement. Some people think they sit safely in the 1 where everyone loves them, and they are great. They can make anyone belong. But from the outside, an observer can see that their cherished 1 is in fact a 0. They are a discourager.

There are many encouragers that you will meet along the way, but sadly there will be just as many, and sometimes more discouragers in your life. It could be your boss, it could be a friend it could even be a loved one. I like to think of myself as a encourager, as a 1, and I might do a very good job now and then and I do try. But not always do I succeed. I might point out something that does discourage you, but if I do, it is because I want to help build you up in the long run. Sometimes a breakdown here and there means more debris to scavenge to build higher and stronger later. But even as I do try, I am open to possibly being a discourager, a 0.

But sometimes people do not even realize that they are a 0 and what is worse is when they do not really even care if they are a 1. These people can be friendly to your face, but always have a comment about something, a small cut to your life that hurts less than a prick, but bleeds like an artery was severed. One person I know, though always friendly with me, often does and says stuff that really gets some discouraged with everything. They will ask a question about something to a person who wasn't around at the time about something, knowing full well that I was the only one there or allow one person to make shrewd joke but then say I cannot make the same ones. And they do it several times a week.

And this gets me greatly discouraged. I love going there. I enjoy doing what it is I do there, yet now I feel like I do not want to go anymore, I should decide to do something different all together and just leave. We are friends, but I do not feel that they encourage or strengthen the group as a whole. And this discouragement gets me down. I feel depressed and sometimes even as far as feeling I am a failure in the whole life department. Honestly it is a crushing feeling. And I am not sure they even know they are doing it.

Discouragement will bring people down greatly. Depression is also binary, either you feel fine or you feel broken. In depression, the 0 is feeling fine. The depression is "off" so to speak and when a discourager comes around, that 0 can quickly become a 1. When that happens a whole slew of 1s and 0s start clicking on and off. Happiness becomes a 0, it is shut off and sadness is clicked to a 1. Our feelings become logic gates and a whole if this than that line goes through our being changing who we are that day. We shut down all that's good in us, and the bad just clicks on and you will sit back feeling like a total waste of space and worthless until someone comes along and encourages you.

When that person, or whatever it might be, that comes and hits that encouragement to 1 those same switches and gates turn the other way, Sadness is replaced with Joy, a 1. The 1 of Hope replaces the 0 of dispair and you begin to feel good. The depression breaks for a while instead of you. And you can go on for a bit longer. The simplest way to feel good is to be encouraged.

The good news is, there is a constant 1 in the universe. An encourager, a hope maker, a joy giver, and a lover. He is every good in a world of bad. He is the 1 to drown out all the 0s. And he is there for you. He is set and ready to whisper 1s into your life day after day, night after night. Like I said, we humans are all sorts of 0s and 1s but God is a constant 1.

01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01001010 01100101 01110011 01110101 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 01100101 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01100110 01101001 01111000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01100010 01100101 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01110100 00101110 .

Notes on Notes on Blindness

A few months back, I decided to jump onto the Virtual Reality bandwagon and bought myself a Samsung Gear VR headset. As much as I would love to get an Oculus Rift or a HTC Vive, they are just too expensive for me. The Gear VR however, was only $100 and is a fantastic way to get your foot into the door of VR. 

Much of my time on it, has been playing rather simple games, that in all honesty, probably could have been done with out the use of VR (and in some cases, might have been better without it). But there are gems in the small but growing library of games. Stuff like Land's End, Herobound, are great games and things like Titans of Space, and The BluVR, are excellent examples of immersive learning apps. All in all, I love the Gear VR, and even though I might not be able to play some of the biggest and newest games in VR, I still have greats like Minecraft.

Oddly the app that got me thinking the most about stuff was a small one called Notes on Blindness. On a device that is designed for the sighted, it was an app about blindness that has had the most impact on me. Notes on Blindness is a short VR story told from the audio cassettes of of John Hull as he went blind. What I found in the short videos, was something that made the Gear VR worth the buy. It immersed me deeply and moved me like few other "video games" have done in the past.

To call it a video game is not really accurate. There is no game play, all you really do is sit there and ride along with John Hull as he narrates things, but saying that cuts it short. The simple visuals combined with the great sound effects and being able to look around at what is going on all the while somehow feeling like you have lost some of your sight is a feeling I would like to share with all of you.

Like a good thought exercise should do, it got me thinking of how I perceive the world. I have rather bad eyesight, I need glasses to see, and even with the fancy best poly-carbonate or whatever the plastic lenses are, they are still pretty thick, but I can see. Sure things are blurry if I am not wearing them, and to be completely honest, even with them things aren't perfectly clear, but I can still see what is around me, see people's faces, and beautiful sights this world has to offer. I can scarcely imagine what it might be like to be blind. 

But then I thought about how everything is really geared for us who can see. From our entertainment to our private moments, we see to enjoy. There is a pretty steady estimate of 2.3% of the population is blind. Not large by the overall numbers, but that is still 700,000 children and 7.3 million adults who cannot see. It doesn't seem to matter much if you are male or female, young or old, it seems to hold close to that amount. Here in my home state, there are 270,000 blind people. 

"Being human isn't seeing, its loving." -John Hull. So much of what makes us who we are is being able to see. There could be a whole new world out there when it comes to our understanding of God if we removed sight from way we learn. I am not saying that we should have services in the dark or wrap everyone's eyes, but in our society we rely on so much sight. We need to see God, but we are called to trust, have faith and believe without seeing. I wonder if it is easier for blind people to believe than it is for those of us who can see. 

Assignment: Just the Right Time

I recently took another Lay Servant class for my church. To say I was hesitant is an understatement. I really didn't want to do this, but I also, if God called me to do more, didn't want to have to start over with the basic class. As readers of this blog might recall I wrote a rather good blog about it way back over here. So you can see why I didn't want to do this again. But this class is better. We aren't here to talk about how great we are, but to find ways to better share how great God is with everyone. So now I have to write. Which is good because I enjoy writing. It helps me focus, and even if it isn't about God directly, somehow I always feel at peace with my walk with God. I did the class to better help me form my blogs and don't have any real intentions to speak in front of people. But you never know what might happen. 

I was given an assignment to look at some verses in the Bible and pick one to talk about. Initially I had picked a bit from Luke, because I am rather poor with my money management, and find myself often working for money rather than working for God. But on rereading them, I felt that 1 Timothy 2: 1-7 needed some of my... odd insights. 

When we look at the bible and the time frame of it all, we find that for the Jews, it was about 4000 years from the time Adam was created, to the time Jesus was executed. That is a pretty long time and a lot of things happened between the two points. One of the biggest things that happened which was big enough to change the course of history, and happened many times, was the rise and fall of many great nations. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Israel, bringing us to the rise of the Roman Empire. When Jesus was alive Rome was still in their prime. They were growing, they ruled much of the world. Judea was a small corner of a vast empire that spread from the north coast of Africa up through Spain, Belgium, England back across to the Black Sea which is between Turkey and Russia. In short the Roman Empire was 1,699,000 miles squared. To get another view of that, that is about 45% the size of the United States. And they did all that without the use of cars and phones, but with horses, boats, a lot of running.

That is a pretty big place for the technology that they had. And that technology is what made them great. They built giant aqueducts that are still standing, roads that you can still walk on, buildings that are still magnificent to behold despite us being able to build 1000 feet upward. In fact, I think we can thank the Roman Empire for their hard work at making the "civilized world" a safe place to travel. The well guarded roads and frequent villages along them made it possible for Christianity to spread out to the world.

1 Timothy 2:6 (NLT): He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time.

Think about it, if Rome didn't have the roads for safe travel, it is likely that this new religion might have fizzled out in that remote corner of the Empire. It worked well because this was God's time. It is hard for us to do things on God's time because we have so little of it to begin with. What is 100 years when God has been working for 4000 years for just the right time to send his son to bring salvation to the world.

For sure, God could have done this faster, he could have created the stuff himself, he could have done anything faster and better, but what good would it have been and how would God have been glorified if he did it all. We are the hands, the feet, the mouth. Man is how he interacts with Earth. He let us go on with our lives as if he didn't exist all the while still using us to his ends. Not everything that happens in the world is God's will, but he can use it anyways.

If I say no to preaching, he will get the message heard one way or another, by someone else if the need be. Yet I resist and I fight because I do not want to be the center of attention. I do not want people looking at me, dissecting everything that I say. I don't want the lime light. I want to sit back and stay in the shadows, or behind a computer screen. I am safe. I do not want uncertainty.

Yet God is still working. It has been over 6000 years since Adam and the start of God's plan for salvation. What is 6000 years compared to an eternity. God is working through us, and if we listen we might even be able to speed things up. Who knows? Maybe God needs someone to share an inspiring message that sparks an idea that sets someone off to gather a team who design a way of broadcasting the internet for everyone across the globe for free. Maybe that someone is here, or reading this.

Facebook is already working on this with drones. They are working on drones that will use solar power to stay flying and bringing wifi to people who didn't have a way to use it before. Google frequently pushes technology forward so that the price will drop and availability will improve. The old hymn "It Is Well" has a line "Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll." It is a sentiment that we all use, frankly, who doesn't want Christ to come back and finish his plan so that we can spend all of eternity with God. If you want the Lord to "haste the day," your best way is support the advancement of technology so that one day every person in the world will be able to see at the same time the coming Glory.

God is using our creations for his will. Much like God will use the bad stuff in our lives to show his power and love, God might use our technology even if the ones creating it do not believe in him. He can use anything to fulfill his plan because he knows what is going to happen and when. God had this plan long before we were here. Sometimes it takes longer for us to reach the next milestone because of our lack of willingness, but we will reach it nonetheless.

I feel that God will continue to work using man to build everything He needs at just the right time. To make sure that when Jesus comes back every person everywhere can hear exactly what is going on. The Bible says that every creature in heaven, on the earth, under the earth, and in the seas will cry out and sing songs to the Lord. Because the time was just right.

Corporate Rearranging

Even as little as six months ago, I was a big fan of a certain company I will not name. I really liked what they were doing, I liked who was running the one close to me, and was very excited to see how things were going to improve overall. I was big enough into all of it, that I thought about putting my future deeper into theirs. But then something happened with someone there, an ending of a relationship with someone else, and things began to change.

First it was small, people change after long relationships and that was fine. But months went by, new relations were made, yet still things did not go back to what they once were. And I found myself on the outside of what I was so willing to be on the inside just a short time ago. It has been just about a year now since I took a step toward being more of a company man and suddenly I found myself in a spot that leaves me with a bad, bitter, taste in my mouth. Like spoiled milk.

There are people that simply do not care about what goes on, they are only there for a paycheck, yet they are left unchecked. Several key people that had been with the company for a long time, are looking for work elsewhere, because they can see that things are not going to change. Which leaves me in a spot I would rather not be in. I still believe in the company, but just not those who are controlling it. I do think the controllers do love the company they work for, but they have taken a backwards approach and instead of talking and building people, they make passive-aggressive comments when in ear shot.

I have now become to resent the company, which is affecting me more than it should. I am having a hard time climbing into happy these days, and is giving me a very negative outlook on life in general. And also has me worrying for what the future may hold.

"But these are the times that try men's souls," as the saying goes, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." I know this has nothing to do with the Revolution, but part of this still is true. If I was to shrink from service, because I was depressed, or angry, I would be nothing. The hard times come so we can be stronger in the future.  My service is to Jesus, not to man and companies.

Maybe this is what Jesus has been getting me ready for, to move toward something more brave and bold than a big corporation. Maybe this is first step, letting go of the things in my life that I thought were great to take claim of something even greater. We go through hell and emerge stronger and better than we were before. Jesus takes the broken, mends them, and releases them renewed and rebuilt. Maybe it is time for me to do some corporate rearranging in my life so that God can shine from me.

Return

When we have favorite things we often go back over and over to enjoy them. Even an old classic like Legend of Zelda, (which I personally have played many times over.) we download on our phones or PC. We can travel farther and farther away from our roots, in this case the games we started with, and find new loves and places to stay in but the favorites, our first loves, and our beginnings will always have a place in our hearts.

We return no matter how far we have gone back to our roots for fun and nostalgia, but we are always looking forward for what is new on the horizon. What is that next game that will captivate the older us like we were young again. It is almost a longing for something new and exciting yet safe and familiar. We want our games to change but don't want to lose the past.

We do this for many many things in our lives, yet sometimes it feels that we are not willing to let anything change at all when it comes to our Christian lives. We want churches to remain the same, keeping the traditional services despite no longer reaching the people we need to. We keep the same bible even though new manuscripts and various documents have been found combined with better understanding of ancient languages have given us better translations. We don't want change even though we lost our past.

Time has moved forward and we are losing what made the church grow as much as it did. In the U.S. our churches are failing and closing, God is banned from everywhere, and we let it happen. Yet over seas the churches are growing by leaps and bounds. New people by the thousands everyday are turning to Christ for salvation, even when it could be death for them and their entire family. Because God is so worth it.

I was asking my mother today, how do we grow a church? I hear of these small churches that are growing and thriving and making such an impact on their cities and towns, yet many of the ones I see are dwindling and dying. What is it that has kept the church growing elsewhere, yet so many in the U.S. are dying? 

I kinda think its a combination of compromise and a displacement of God. Displacement. We make church into something that is for us and our families, not a place for lost people trying to find real answers. We keep our past without growing our future. Compromise. We are settling on Politically Correct instead of Biblically Correct. It is a hard, hard road we are traveling, in a hard, hard time. There are no easy answers to my question. God needs to be there is obvious, but how do we engage young people who are more interested in pleasures of now than peace of tomorrow.

Can we return to our roots so we can travel farther and farther into the world to get His Word out there? Are we able to stop compromising the Bible despite the fear of being hated for it? Who will finally realize that the church is not a place to feel good about yourself, but a place of introspection? Are we able to keep up with the Church around the world in our own little churches here? Can the church return? You tell me.

Aliens

Aliens. Do I need to go on? Fine, fine, I will. Science, from what I have read, don't have an explanation of why we have not seen aliens or signs of intelligent life in the cosmos. Ideally, we should have seen something by now, even a radio signal. I mean mathematically speaking, with the low end estimate of 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and even assuming that only 10% of those have planets that leaves us with 10 billion stars with planets. If we just guess that only 10% of those planets are able to support life, that is still one billion planets supporting life. We could go farther still, and only 10% of life is intelligent, we are now at 100 million intelligent life planets. Surely that is good odds for life.

And then you have the crazies out there that say we are the only ones in this massive universe. Yeah its a dumb thing to think. Not only because with an estimate of 100 billion galaxies, and the same odds of life that ours has, there should be many many more out there. "But God made this all for us!" I hear a cry from the back row, to which I reply, "Are you so self centered and selfish, you think any of this is for you?" I do not mean to sound mean, but if we were the only ones, why would God have made so much out there?

Truth is, God didn't make anything for us. Though he did give us a planet and as far as we have found so far, a very amazing and unique planet. But still, it was not made for us. I would almost argue we were made for it. And all of it was made because God is a creator and that is what creators do. You can even take Genesis 1 as an example as us being made for the world. We were the last to go on here. He had what He wanted this planet to be, then made man to dwell on it.

Already we have found Stars with planets that circle them, and many in the habitable zone of their star. Some are rocky, others are gas giants, and some could be rocky planets with water. A few are found much to close to the sun, but suggest the planet itself is made up much like Earth is.

From Nasa's Tumblr page

I got on the idea of aliens, because I read an article on 10 intriguing worlds we have found around stars. These are just the planets fairly close to us. Kepler-186f is earth size, and is in the right place to support life. That depends on a few things, like is it for sure a rocky planet like ours? What is the atmosphere made of? And many more things that we cannot tell at this point in time.

Maybe someday we can find out, the science in space travel is an ever growing study. It is possible that there are people alive now, that will see us travel and leave our solar system. Boy I hope I am around for that. We have technologies that are real now, or just need a bit more work for space travel, things like Light Sails, Fusion, anti-matter, or even a black hole drive. I mean let's travel the same way the Romulans do. Little bit of controlled lasers, a bit of radiation, and we have an engine running on a black hole of light, getting us where ever we want to go, pretty darn fast. And as weird as it sounds, we have already people working on warp drives like Star Trek.

So we could travel out there and see aliens. Or maybe they will find their way to us eventually. Though I have a feeling they would not be peaceful. Our biggest reason to travel into space is not because of exploration, but because of dire need. It is safe to say those aliens are doing the same. And not to leave out the young earthers out there, if everything is as old as they say, all that life is in the same boat as us so it would make sense we haven't seen them.

I think we haven't seen aliens simply because of the sheer size of the galaxy, let alone the rest of the universe. But I believe God has made countless worlds because he loves to create. I would even go as far as saying, if those aliens did something to fall from God's grace as man has, then I firmly believe that Jesus also visited those planets and gave his life for them.

God made the stars and all the countless worlds to simply glorify him. The same with all life, including us. We are here to give him glory. But man wouldn't it be awesome to travel to the stars? But there are aliens out there. There are planets a plenty. Right now we are looking for places that have stuff in common with Earth, but what if God had made other beings for the other planets he made. He made us to fit Earth, but what if he made someone to fit Kepler-186f the same way.

Thanks for reading my musings.

Learning to Love

I have been having a hard time in my heart reconciling my rather, shall we say, dislike of humanity, and the love that God has for them. I know that I am to love them like him, yet I admit there has been feelings of hate toward various ethnicities, people with average or below average intelligence, and a lot of hate toward the self centered people out there. As I try to reconcile this feeling, I find that I am hating myself because I would rather be concerned for myself, not others. I want to educate myself, (I love to do research on whatever might pop into my head every chance I get.) and ignore the stupid out there.

I want the world to know how great Jesus is, what he can do in your life if you let him. Yet I hold back, not allowing that finally bit. I heard a good podcast by the guys over at ComeandLive.com, in one part of it, they mention when Abraham took Issac up to the mountain to be sacrificed. Almost every time I hear about this story it is about how faithful Abraham was that he was willing to sacrifice his own son for God. And it is true that Abraham was extremely faithful but what they mention I had not thought of before.

Issac was God's promise. Abraham waited a very long time to have this promise fulfilled. So long that he doubted God and had sex with one of his servants which produced Ishmael. (By the way, in the Jewish, it is Yishma'el meaning God pays attention or God hears.) But God wasn't done with his plan, and gave Abraham and Sarah, Issac. (On another side note, Sarah used to be called Sarai. I have heard many times that both mean princess. One thing said it might be the difference of the changing of the dialects of Ur and Canaan, but as I was using the Complete Jewish Bible, with Jewish names and meanings in it, it said that Sarai meant mockery. She was a mockery because she couldn't have kids, but then went to being a princess when God fulfilled his plan in her life. Thought that was pretty cool.) 

What the guys in the podcast had mentioned was that when Issac was strapped down to the altar, not only was Abraham showing obedience, but also that God needed Abraham to remove Issac from the front of his heart, where God belongs. Abraham waited many years to have the son God promised, he was one hundred years old and Sarah was in her 90's. God has to be first, even over family. With Abraham willing to let God be first, he was able to turn him from a great father, to a father of many nations. He went from being a influential person in Jewish history, to being an influential person in many parts of the world, and his line would eventually give us Jesus.

I am not good at this, I try as hard as I can, but I am afraid to but that final bit of me away and put only God in my heart. It is so hard. I doubt I would be as faithful as Abraham. But I hope to. We put so much stock in ourselves, in our looks, in our money, in the things we own, and the things we think we own. We build up our dreams so that we can be something. But God wants to take your dreams away, kill them. He wants to put his plan in its place. Not that he doesn't want you to have your dreams, but His plan is so much better. He wants to give you every one of your dreams, in His way, not yours.

I want to do this, put him first, his plan and live out his story. I will fail. I am only human after all, but even in my failure, God is mighty. I want to stop with my swearing, stop with my anger, I want to fight all of the urges that make up me, so that I can be like Jesus. I pray that I can do it, I will try. I want to be able to love those people I don't want to love. I want to love and not hate so much. Life is not that great with so much hate. In time maybe I can do this. In time maybe we can all do this. We need to stop being in the news for our hate, and be in the news for our love. If we can show people that God loves them so much, then they can stop trying to find love in the darkness of this world. But first let's learn to love.

Curse

I like to think, as I can imagine many Christians do, that if I had been alive when Jesus was, I would have followed him, I would have been right there next to him on the cross. But if I really look at myself I know I wouldn't be there. In fact I would have been Peter, denying him three times. I would have been Thomas, who didn't believe it until he finally was able to touch the wounds. I would probably have been the first to run.

It is not an easy thing, I love Jesus, I really do, and I say to myself that if I am to be killed or to renounce God, I would stand tall and die bravely. But if I really look at who I am, I ask myself, "Would you really?" These days, we are being put to the test.

There is a guy at my work, who makes jokes a lot about God, or just religion in general. I usually don't laugh, but its because they aren't actually funny. Sometimes they are and I do laugh. I can take jokes, but what the jokes are saying overall about God is that He is a joke and we are jokes that believe in him.

Every day Jesus is being executed again. Every day He is cut down by the media, by crazy people, by good people, by a world who hates him. Are we really so cold that we can just stand by and let people all over crush the Son of God? Why are we not more moved to do something? Why are we more moved to free the whales that to defend and praise God?

Jesus is not a memory, He is not a martyr. Jesus is alive and shining bright. I think we tend to forget who he is. This Easter, in church, the pastor pointed out the signs in John of who God is, but did all of us follow the signs? Jesus is not a corpse, not a zombie, not a lich, but a Living and breathing God who loves us, despite us denying Him. Jesus is not a movement to be nicer people. The world has plenty of them. Jesus is alive, we are the flesh he chooses to wear until the end of the world comes in His glory.

I want to have a resurrected heart that beats in line with His. I want to stand up and be brave enough to die for him. I want to pass the test. I pray I never need to take it though. I want to be a good example of Christ so that others may also find him. I fail so often. I am not overflowing with joy or even happiness. I hide behind screens and half-hearted laughs. Truth is I am a horrible Christian. I cannot just go all in, even though I really want to.

I guess it is good that we have a God who gives chances. Maybe sometime I will actually be able to do it. Maybe we all will someday. Maybe soon we will come alive and we can bring a little heaven to this hurting world. Jesus is coming someday. I don't think it will be very soon, at least by our time, but I could be wrong, and I need to begin to live as if he were coming tomorrow.

Jesus, forgive my failures. I know I fail more often than nought, but I do love you. I want to be better and to follow you. I will try my best to let the dead bury the dead and I hope I will not keep falling, but if I do, please remain close to me and help me back up. Let me be a David in a world of Goliaths. Lead me into the mountains so that I can be an Abraham, to trust you that completely. Thank you for all that you have done for me, even if I fail over and over to earn it.




This blog was inspired by the song Curse by a band called My Epic

Everything is Not Good

Recently I was talking to a friend about the blog and he made a comment that hit me in the gut. Not because it was mean or anything, but because it was too true. He said the guy that I am at work is not the same as the guy who writes the blogs. I thought to myself, "Ya know, dude is right. I really need to be a better person where others can see me. Not just a good person where people only read what I write and can't see me do whatever it is I choose to do."

All too often I blend in with those I am around, partly because I don't want to stand out, be different and thus get noticed. But also because the hate that is thrown the Christian way is not something I really want to step into. This attitude hurts more than almost anything that I can do. Think about it. People say all the time that they don't have to talk about Christ because people will be able to tell by their life. Sorry to say, that is a line of bull you are spouting and only fool yourself. Jesus is not shown in being nice to people, He will only be shown if you are beyond what the world considers nice. If you are negative and swear like I do, then Jesus will never be seen. If you are happy and fun, but still not filled with love for everyone Jesus will not be seen. Maybe you are friendly to everyone that walks in, but until you are loving even to those you really dislike, for me it's the stupid diesel guys around here or the overly chromed look-at-my-truck-it's-shiney people.

You have to find ways to love those people. I don't know how, because I am terrible at that, but we all have to try and find it. One idea I think can help, is if we are in worship at all times. Worship is not a Sunday morning thing, nor is it an after I get off of work thing. Worship is an all the time, sing praises when you are hurt, shout for joy when the world is crumbling, thing. How do you sing praises in pain? By remembering that the pain is worth it for what comes next. You shout for joy when the world is crumbling because you have to break ground to build something even better.

My friend pointed out how people have forgot how to worship. "People think they can be a Crack head all week, beat their wives, and go to church Sunday and everything's good. People are definitely out of touch." If you call yourself a Christian, you should not and cannot do this every week and think it will be fine. Sorry to break it to you, but you might want to think twice about calling yourself a Christian. Being a Christian should be worship always and share with everyone out there the greatness that is Jesus. Even if you accepted Jesus as your savior you are not done yet. That is step one in an ongoing, multi-step  plan you are invited into. Jesus didn't say, "Believe in me and go about your life like normal doing whatever you want," He said "Go and make disciples of all man..." To this extent, I have been trying to get more Christian music around me, with lyrics that encourage me, at every chance I get. So that there is something of God around me as much as possible. I do not what God to become an out of site out of mind thing.

I am not saying I have any of this down. Heck I can't even go an afternoon without being a jerk. I will be honest, there have been plenty of times I pull out of the church parking lot get driving down the road and begin to yell unkind things at the drivers on the road. I will be singing a song, deep in praise of the Lord, feeling moved and better than I had been, then someone cuts me off and I drop the praise like it was on fire, and curse and flick them off. Hello my name is Brian I am an angry Ohioian when it comes to cars and being in my way.  (If you wonder what I mean by Ohioian, other than the obvious of living in this gloomy state, Ohio uses the F-word(A word I rather enjoy more than I should) more than any other state in the union. At least we are good at something.)

This is a day to day, hour to hour struggle. I want to get better, but I constantly fail at it. "I tried to be a better man, but I'm still learning how." These are lyrics from the new Showbread album. I am fighting day to day to be a better me and sometimes I even surprise myself that I had love when I expected something closer to hate to be there. God does work in me, even if I push him out. We all need to keep pushing for love, for worship at all times, praise in all things. It is a goal that we should all share and support each other in. Why I feel small groups of like people should get together to support and hold people accountable for what they do, so that we can stop sinning and share Jesus with a world that really needs him.

The Ads, The Stepping Stones

I wanted to take a moment to explain a few things with the ads I ask you kind folks to click. First of all, I wanted to tell you that the ads are safe to click. I know a lot of people don't like to click them because of worry of viruses and stuffs, but the ads I ask you to click are fine. The ads are done by Google themselves. The company the ad is for, pays Google to host the ads, and put them into the grouping of ads for Google's adSense program. So when you click I get a little portion of the ads that Google is willing to pay me.

You see, I want to start doing what God wants me to do, not what I want to do. I do feel that I need to write more blogs and share all the greatness in God with anyone who can read it. What is being asked goes beyond just the blog, but I love it and it is a good tool in furthering God and his plan. So I ask you to click ads that down the road, I can go to part time at my day job and turn this blog and my life into a ministry for Jesus.

So please click an ad each time you visit. It will help me a lot. While sharing the blog with your friends will grow the people reading and then they too can click and share and we can all grow together.

I don't want to be one of the people that only talk about Jesus, I want to live for Him as well. I want to be hands working and feet moving. Too long have I just been an inactive member of an anonymous church in where people like to think that the community knows who they are. But truth is, I don't think many churches are known outside of the people that go there.

"Where do you go to church?" they ask,
"The church on such and such street." You reply, proud of the good deeds you have done.
"Where? I don't recall a church there." They stare at you confused. Surely they know your church. You do so much for them, rummage sales and free meals. Also it has been there for the last century virtually unchanged.
"The one on the corner next to that place." A dawning look appears on their face.
"Wait," the say, looking confused again, "That is a church there?"

From Twitter.

I think that is how many of the conversations about the churches in the rural areas go, people either don't know where you are, or didn't know it was a church. Times have changed, but the buildings we attend worship in haven't. Things are moving fast in the direction of science without God, and the churches are left with old hymnals with songs in there that many of the attendees don't even know anymore. And this is where I do not want to remain. I want to grow beyond what a building can do, and become what the hands and feet of God can do. God didn't even use his hands when he made the heavens and the earth, imagine the work he can do when he uses his hands as well. Imagine the whole body of God working as one and the kind of wonder that can change the world into what God wants.

If I can make this into a real job, and I do think I can with the support of all of you, I can finally do what I have always wanted as well as steps toward what God has always wanted for me. I want to take this blog further and farther than it has ever been before. I have toyed with the idea of starting a Podcast, but I need all the support I can get from those of you who have been with me since the start of this blog two years ago.

So please click some ads for me and keep sharing this blog. Because the future is exciting, we have found actual Gravity waves in space, NASA is planning and working on a mission to go to Europa, the sixth largest moon of Jupiter, but what is exciting more, is taking steps to follow God and stop walking in circles because I keep trying to follow my own steps. The ads are just stepping stones into something much greater.

Planetary

“Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space...” Douglas Adams

This past week scientists at Caltech announced that they have some evidence of an actual ninth planet well beyond the orbits of the rest. In 2014 two guys published a paper about 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt that had strange orbits. This paper piqued the interest of some others, and they began a year long look at these KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects).

What was strange about them is that they were all on elliptical orbits that all point in the same direction. Also they were in a tilted orbit of about thirty degrees off from the plane of orbit of the other planets. In our solar system the odds of that would be about .007 percent. Yeah pretty low.

So they threw different ideas in and shot them down as they came. Back and forth until finally they put a planet in, with a mass about 10 times that of Earth, and found that if the closest apporach to the sun of said planet was 180 degrees away from the closest orbit of the KBOs everything lined up.

This planet, as I said, would be about 10 times the mass of the Earth, it would likely be a gaseous planet close to Uranus and Neptune. It would have an orbit that would be an average of about 20 times that if Neptune. And in case you want to know that distance, Neptune orbits around 2.8 million miles from the sun. So this orbit would be huge and would make one trip around the sun in about 10-20 thousand years.

There is more evidence and answers by having a large planet like this in this weird orbit as well.

"A good theory should not only explain things that you set out to explain. It should hopefully explain things that you didn't set out to explain and make predictions that are testable," says Batygin.

Right now there are three known objects that travel in a perpendicular orbit to the planetary plane. While they were running the models, it also put these in their place. This is awesome to me. I mean we can tell there are planets around stars, by reading the dimming of their light, at light years away, yet we can still find something amazing in our own backyard. Sometimes things rather absurd end up being real.

Conspiracy theorists are already saying this is the fabled planet Nibiru that the ancient Sumerians supposedly said existed thousands of years ago. Even if it is not the same, it gives even more things to add to our great imagination. More fuel to feed excitement and fan the fires of our young to want to learn more, be more, explore everything. I think even if this turns out to be something else, or just a coincidence, this is exciting.

Thoughts and Prayers Problems

I spend a lot of time on the internet. Way more than I care to admit. If we could jack the internet directly into our brains, I probably would. I love being connected, I love the wealth of information that you can get by a push of a few buttons or screen presses. And since I am on the internet a lot I read a lot of stuff. From funny jokes, to combative posts on why religious people are dumb, to curious observations on the current state of everything.

I recently read a joking post on a popular Facebook page with an info-graphic making fun of people using the term "thoughts and prayers" when ever something bad happens in the world. At first I got mad like a good Christian American at the attack on what I believe. But then like a good Christian in general, I realized the attack was not an attack just a comment on what people are saying and doing in the world.

This phrase is often used when another shooting happens. "I'll keep you in my thoughts and prayers." And as I thought about thoughts and prayers a thought occurred to me how little thought goes into that phrase usually. (I thought that the thought of the last sentence had just the right about of thought thoughts in it.) "Thoughts and Prayers" (From now on will be called T&P.) is a phrase that shows just enough care that you feel good about how you are seen by other people. I am sure there are people who do pray about it, which any Christian should be doing everyday without ever mentioning it. It is something that should be so deeply part of our lives that every thought should be a prayer. I suck at this but we all know that that is how close we should be to Christ.

See, I think T&P is not enough for us to do. Yes we should pray all the time, about everything, giving praise, asking for help, comfort, guidance, and whatever else we may need. But there comes a time when thoughts or prayers need to turn into action. When faith becomes more than a belief and turns into who we are. Wouldn't you like to be called "The Faithful" and really be that? There is a time when our words against violence needs to be action against sin.

At some point, we need to actually take steps into being Hands. When a tragedy strikes, we should be the first to be on the scene with food, water, clothing, or whatever the circumstance is. If a shooting, then we should be there as Ears and offering Hearts to everyone. Sometimes T&P are nothing more than words. As James said, 

"15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." 18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.

 You see, if we truly loved God with everything that we are, then we would want to do everything we can to let people know about him in deeds and in words. We need to begin to be action oriented people instead of those quiet people in the back. I do not feel this should be done with picketing anything, but by loving and supporting and doing things for people because they need it. Look at the causes of the tragedies and find ways to fix them. Love does not end wars, prayer alone does not fix problems, thoughts generally do nothing at all. It is not the thought that counts, but what you do with the thought. Action is always better.

Next time T&P is used by you or a close friend, ask yourself, or them, to go a little further and actually be the thoughts and the prayers that others are giving. Show the world God is working with more than hollow words. We are the body of Christ. Bodies do not think, they work, they do. Let's go Do.