We are still in Beta.

Yet another Dragon Picture. Say this knight wants to protect you at all costs. (Which he does) so what does he do. He locks you up and never lets you out. Now, yes you’re comfortable, you’ve got great living conditions and great food, but you still feel like a prisoner. So what happens? After a few years you are going to start thinking that this “knight” of yours is not so knightly. He is more like an evil warlord.

So this is yet another view I get of Jesus. People ask “why did you let this happen? Why did you make this happen?” He didn’t make it happen. He let it happen because he wants you to have free will. If you decided to take your horse into that forest that you have been warned against going into he is going to let you. He is not going to stop your free will.

God loves you and wants whats best for you. If you don’t realize that, and think there is more for you when you don’t follow God; well then you obviously don’t know God. No I’m not saying sit back and let life pass you by. By all means go jump off of waterfalls, dive into lakes, run through forests of green feeling the wind pass you by, rock climb up the tallest mountain, etc. God wants you to experience these things. But, if God says “Hey you better watch out for the trolls that live under the bridge over there” then you better listen. He isn’t trying to keep you locked up. He isn’t trying to prohibit you from doing something fun, he is just protecting you.

Final word, you often will get yourself into bad situations. I’ve done it, others have done it, you will do it if you haven’t yet. God wants to rescue you from that, but he doesn’t want you to have to be in that situation in the first place. God loves you, will protect you, will rescue you, will pursue you, and always wants what is best for you.

>I know this is long but I think it’s good.<

Ok so this might not make perfect sense, but I understand what I’m saying so just try to follow along and let me ramble. It is my Blog after all. Haha.

So I was sitting in church 2 weeks ago and something the pastor said made me think of this. I don’t remember what he said but I wrote down the idea it gave me because I liked the idea.

Lots of people blame God for either making something happen, or letting it happen. Now right off the bat this is wrong. See God doesn’t make bad things happen. He let’s them, but it’s for your own good. This is where most of us view it wrong, including me a lot of the time. See God will let bad things happen, because he is a warrior at heart. Let’s delve into this subject. (I said delve. Wow.)

As I talked about in the last post God is our deliverer. He wants to rescue us. Now tell me how can he rescue us if we never see the bad things affect us? Can he rescue us then? Yes and No, I think. See he could rescue us before something happens, but we wouldn’t see the rescue. I’m sure he does this but we don’t see it. Now if he lets the bad thing happen and then pulls us out, therefore delivering us, we can see him at work.

An example. So go back a few centurys, and say there is a knight, a princess and a dragon. (This is how all good stories go) So view exhibit A.

A. A Princess is on a nice long ride on her horse through the forest. Little does she know she is heading towards the dragons cave. Lets call him Nogard. So Nogard is in his cave when he hears the princess approaching on her horse. Unbeknownst to both the princess and the dragon a knight (who has a fancy for the princess) is following her. He happens to see Nogard but the princess does not. So using his quick decision making skills he rides ahead kills Nogard, thus saving the princess, rides back towards the princess, sets up a detour and leaves. The princess (not the brightest of the bunch) does not realize any of this and a short while later arrives home never suspecting anything.

Exhibit B. The Princess is on yet another nice long horse ride through the forest. Little does she know she is heading towards another dragons cave. Lets call this one Snog. So Snog hears the princess approaching on her horse and plans to scare her. The princess (being small minded) still does not know about her pursuer, the knight. So the knight follows the princess until the dragon attacks. He has seen Snog the dragon from quite a distance back. He sits back, knowing Snog is not one to eat princess’s often, but it could happen. So after watching Snog blow flames, beat his chest and do other dragon like things, and after watching the princess cower in fear, cry, scream, wince, and do other scared princess like things he rides into action. He makes a great show of beating back the “foul beast” and finally killing it. He then runs to the princess sweeps her off of her feet and asks if she is alright. Upon hearing that she is fine except for some wet cheeks he sets her on his horse, hops on behind her and they ride home.

Now my question is, which story did you like better? A or B, and no saying I’m bad at writing is not an answer. Sorry, but ignore that for a second. Personally I think B is a lot more entertaining.

This is what I picture God doing for us. A or B. Him being the knight that we don’t know of is rescuing us half of the time. The other half he makes a great show of rescuing us and sweeps us off of our feet. Yes in between there is a great deal of us complaining and whining “God why did you let this happen? How could you?!? Where are you?” etc. etc. But as I just showed, how can God really show us himself if he doesn’t let it happen? And God most definitely did not MAKE this happen. He allowed it so that it could be used for his greater good, but he did not make it happen.

I know this is long but a few more things. Yes at times the situation might seem worse. Nogard, or Snog might actually be a human eating dragon, we might sustain a few scrapes, a broken bone, or in actually causes hurt feelings, a lost friend, a divorce etc. No I’m not saying this is good. I’m not saying God wants you to get hurt, but I am saying he wants to rescue you. No matter what your situation is he wants to rescue you, or at least help you. There might be some instances where Snog, or Nogard are not flesh eating and you can be a Tom-Boy Princess. You can pull a sword from your horse and join the knight in scaring that dragon out of its whits.

So the conclusion. God wants to rescue you. God doesn’t make bad things happen. God wants to help you get through these bad situations. That is what I am saying. Just remember God is always there helping you, whether you see him or not.

**Warning the post below is a joke. The viewpoints expressed in the post below are in no way connected to the thoughts of the author. Please don’t hold anything against him, even though he is the creator of the thoughts. The purpose is to make you laugh, not get mad. Thank you**

So I’ve solved the worlds problems. Basically it came about during a communications class. See we were doing persuasive essays, or debates. So I decided that there are 2 ways to solve all of these problems. The first and simplest way, is to take humans out of the equations. See there wouldn’t be so little salmon if we hadn’t built all the dams. Which then when we needed salmon, and the sea lions started eating them, we wouldn’t have to kill the sea lions, or not have enough salmon.

Another example is assisted suicide. Should it be legal? Well it doesn’t matter if their are no humans who want to kill themselves, or doctors who wanted money.

Then there is the most obvious fact being, that we couldn’t debate (argue) about these topics if humans didn’t exist. Thus take humans out of the equation and the world would be perfect.

So the other idea I came up with was this.

So to start with, there are to many nuclear weapons and we are afraid of starting wars. So to get rid of the nuclear weapons we just have to bomb the Wal-Marts. See there are also to many Wal-Marts, which are putting small businesses out of business. Now this also solves a few extra problems. See Wal-Mart is an equal opportunity employer. This means they will employ anybody equally, rapists, murderers, illegal immigrants, thieves, and kidnappers. So we blow up the Wal-Marts and we get rid of these people, Wal-Mart and Nuclear Weapons. This then causes radiation. Which will cause diseases and surely terminally ill patients. So the people who survive the Wal-Mart bombings will either die painfully, or have to be administered drugs to help them die. Unluckily the USA will have made it illegal for a doctor to perform assisted suicide, so the Mexicans and Canadians will be practicing it instead. So all of these people who worked at Wal-Mart and now have Terminal illnesses will have to go to Mexico or Canada or some other country. So the Mexicans and Canadians and people of other country’s who are coming to America illegally, because they can’t find jobs will have jobs assisting suicides. Unfortunately the US will also have raised the driving age to past 25, because our brains don’t develop till at least 25, and then we need some practice. So no one can drive to these places to get the “help” they need at killing themselves. So, they will have to ride whales. This in turn will solve 2 more problems. It will save the whales from whale hunting, and while riding whales the people can shoot the Sea Lions eating our salmon. Thus problems solved. Now what about the Myspace debate? and Teacher Dress code? You might ask. Well I will tell you. We will use Myspace to plan this entire operation, and make sure everyone is wearing the right clothes at the same time. Not to uncomfortable, not to distracting, but just right. Now the world is at peace. And thus, the end of my theory on how Myspace will solve our world problems.

Today we had a guest artist, actually a VSAA alumni. He was pretty cool. We did some theatre exercises with him and then he talked about how the point of it was basically to show that we have to move on in life and not let things affect us. I agree and disagree. Recently A LOT has been going on in my friends lives. I would go into detail but there is really too much to talk about. Basically it has all been bad, and it’s abnormal. My personal opinion is that it is from the Devil. The Devil does attack us. One of the biggest mistakes of Christians is to NOT acknowledge the fact that we are being attacked by the Devil. Basically when you don’t acknowledge the fact, you can’t fight it. If you don’t accept the fact that you are at war, how can you defend yourself? You can’t.

Ephesians 6:11-12

“Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

So accept the fact of the Devils attacks, and then fight back. Defend yourself… with what? Prayer, the Word of God, and living for God.  I think this section says it better than I can

Ephesians 6:14-18

“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”

So spiritual warfare is real and it’s powerful. Look at this section…. Read it like it is; a fight, a war, a battle. Change your perspective when you read it, and it could change your mind and life.

Now as for me not agreeing about just “getting over” things, I think you don’t always need to just “get over” it. See forgive and forget…. That isn’t the motto. We need to acknowledge the problem, face it, and conquer it… or solve it. Make it a part of you. Not sweep it under the rug.  This is never the best idea. It will come out later if you sweep it under the rug. What happens when the rug is moved? You have to face all the problems at once, rather than just one at a time.

If you read Matthew 18:15-17 it will talk about when someone does something hurtful to you and how to deal with it. So what happens if you just sweep it under the rug by ignoring it, or by just saying “yeah whatever, you’re forgiven”? It could end up being worse later because they could bring it up again, or you could because you haven’t dealt with it. It isn’t really gone, you still hold hurt feelings. The best approach would be going and talking with them one on one, and if that doesn’t work bring in another person. That is what Matthew 18:15-17 talks about.

So I agree that you need to get over things, but in the right way. Use it to make yourself a better person. As for not letting it affect you, well let it affect you, but in a good way. That is what I am really getting at.

1 Corinthians 6:19 (NIV)
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;”
You are not your own. This is a very interesting thought. How many of us live for ourselves? Do you? I know that usually I do, and I wish I didn’t. My body is not my own and therefore I need to live like it isn’t mine. It’s been interesting because during communications class we have been doing pros and cons of a topic. One of the topics thats been brought up is assisted suicide. Now my personal opinion is that it is murder to commit suicide. The Bible says that “You are not your own”; therefore you don’t have the right to kill yourself do you? It’s murder. This applies in other aspects of life to. If your body isn’t your own, then shouldn’t you treat it like you would treat another persons body? You would care for it…. Personal hygiene, eating healthy, not doing stupid and dangerous things. Basically you need to take care of yourself, or should I say take care of God’s workmanship. God created you, and loves you and wants you to take care of yourself, his temple. He gave you free choice, yes you can make bad decisions, but he doesn’t want you to.

1 Corinthians 6:12 (The Message)
“Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims.”

So what does this mean? It means not everything is good for you to do. Yes it is legal for you to drink past 21, yes it is legal to have sex outside of marriage, yes it is legal to be stupid…….but does that mean it’s good for you, or it’s what God wants for you? NO! God wants you to be smart and safe, and therefore even though he has given you freedom to do whatever you want, it is not all benifical to him.

1 Corinthians 10:23 (NIV)

Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive.”

So treat your body with respect, and care for others. If you don’t own your body, God does, and God wants you to care for others. He wants you to be blessed through helping others. Truthfully you don’t own your body, it is a gift from God that he is giving your freedom. Do you know what that gift cost God?

His only son.

He died.

For you.

He died on a cross.

With nails.

He was beaten.

Made fun of.

Jeared at.

Spit on.

Mocked.

Kicked.

And hung on that cross to die.

For you.

Will you accept that gift? Will you choose to give it back to him? By sacrificing your body for God? Will you let God call you to do his work? Will you listen and follow? I can say that if you do, if you accept the gift and follow God, you will be blessed.

Luke 6:22

“Blessed are you when men hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.”

John 13:17

“Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

James 1:12

“Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.”

Wow…. If you stick it out through hard times, say when you are letting God use your life, what will you get? “the reward is life and more life”. Isn’t that amazing? The more life you give, the more of yourself you put into you work, the more life you will have. What an amazing thought, promise and blessing. Will you give the gift back to God?

Only you can answer that.

Spider Webs are like problems. With a Spider Web you can’t see it until you’ve run into it, and immediately you look like a freak. As soon as you run into that web your whole walk is out of control. You run through it and people off in the distance think “what is wrong with that person”. None of them can see this web; unless you tell them about it, and then they might not believe you. That’s how problems are. You usually can’t see a problem until its hit you, and if you see it before it hits you then you have to beat it back with a stick. This also makes you look funny. Either way people think you look funny. People usually don’t understand (see) your problems unless you tell them, and even then they don’t always believe you. Once you get tangled in a problem it’s stuck with you for a long time. You can try and get it out, but you don’t know the extent of it. You don’t know were it ends. Thus my conclusion ends. Problems are like Spider webs. Oh and the fact that Spiders, Spider Webs and problems are all disgusting!

So you might remember this post I had a while back about Spider Webs being like problems. Personally I still think it is one of my greatest thoughts ever. Well basically I thought of more to it. So here it is.

I was recently outside; by recently I mean 3 minutes ago. While outside I ran into a spider web. So it gave me a few ideas. When I ran into it guess what my immediate reaction was? It was to jump back and claw at myself trying to get it off. In doing so I potentially could have caused more harm than good. My next impulse was to pick up the nearest thing I could use to beat down the rest of the spider webs with. This is much like life. You run into a problem and your first impulse is to try and pull back and get out of it; to late it’s stuck. Then you claw at yourself trying to get rid of it, which could potentially make it worse, or cause other problems. Next you pick up a beating stick, so as to face any other problems coming your way. See you automatically assume that there will be more problems. I picked up that whacker thinking, “where one is, there has to be more”. We assume the worst, like life is out to get us. So what can we take from this? That we need to calm down, not hurt ourselves in our problems, and be prepared before we hit the first one. Expect them to be there, and then you won’t be surprised. Life will have problems you can’t do anything about it. So just live the best you can, and make the best of all situations. No need to worry excessively, me worrying about the spider webs in my house and yard has never accomplished anything; that stick on the other hand, has.

How can you rate friends? How can you honestly say that you like one friend more than another? Personally I can’t. That is why I hate the friend feature on Myspace. I can’t stand having to rate my friends. Putting them in an order. Yes I might be closer to one friend than another. I might know one better, but that doesn’t mean I like them more. It just means I get more chances to hang out with them. Personally I don’t think God would agree with this system. I don’t think Jesus would rate friends. In fact I know he wouldn’t. Jesus never had favorites. Yes he hung out with certain people more (his disciples) but that didn’t mean he liked them better did it? No he loved everyone the same. Therefore I strongly dislike this feature on Myspace, and in general. I don’t have a “best friend”. I have about 3 friends I know I can tell anything, but that doesn’t mean they are my “best” friends. Though I know it is nice to be called a best friend. Then again all my friends are best friends, just in different ways. So… if anybody knows a way to make your friend box not show up on Myspace, please inform me. It would make you  my “best” friend. Just kidding.

So my cousin Aubrianne recently started a blog. It really is pretty good, though mine is definitely better. . . . . ok maybe I’m just jealous because she can write deep, meaningful cool and humorous posts, and I can’t. Mine are usually lame, or just deep and insightful, but boring. Plus I don’t have a spell checker! Anyway. It’s interesting reading her blog because my friends say that it is just like mine, and that she is just like me only female. This makes me laugh because we have been told before that we look like siblings but I never would have guessed we think alike. It’s also interesting because my mom always says I’m like her dad, my uncle Ken. Something to do with God, Jesus, Philosophy, Bibles, and Churches. I really don’t know. So now that Aubrianne has a blog, I guess there is pressure to keep mine updated, and good. The Aublog also makes me happy because when I read her posts theycan give me insight on what to write and just make me laugh. Oh and it boosts my site rating. The more links that head to my site, the higher the rating! BOY-YAH! So go check hers out, and comment, it makes us bloggers feel loved!
http://www.aubrianne.blogspot.com

Recently I have been hearing a lot of quotes that really apply to life well. I think they are very true and the way they are said are amazing. So here they are, I will explain why I like below.
From “The Glass Menagerie”

“Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse.”
Tom speaking to Amanda, his mother

“You are the only young man I know of who ignores the fact that the future
becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!”
Amanda speaking to Tom, her son.

“All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.”
Amanda speaking to Laura, her daughter.

From a website with jokes

“The Patricia Principal: The more you’ve been trying to attract the attention of a particular man, the more likely it is that you’ll run into him when you’re sweaty, short of sleep, without makeup, wearing house-painting clothes, with your hair in a bandana.”

From our science text book

“By Analogy, consider yourself. You are who you are, but your behavior changes depending upon whom you are with.”

I get multiple things from these, mainly that they are true and hit hard. Such as the first. It is so true about men. In today’s society a man is not allowed to be a man. He is forced to go work in an office, or warehouse, and his heart yearns to do more. He wants to be a man, he wants to climb mountains, fight dragons, save princesses, but he can’t. Men are also told to stuff their feelings, no crying, no whining, and in general be nice. Don’t show anything. Women want men to be “nice guys” but they want to be real men, adventurous, dangerous, and exciting.

The second quote is true also. Don’t procrastinate. Plan for you future, or it will plan for you. You can’t let life pass you by, you need a vision.

The 3rd one is a part of life that I wish wasn’t so true. Not every single pretty girl is a trap, but most of them are. Almost all of them wear clothes, act and talk like they are just there to lure a man in. It is quite sad really. The media has a lot to do with it, woman dress like objects, and want to be treated like them, or so it seems because of the way they act.

The 4th quote is not necessarily true, but it might feel like it. The problem is that this is really you. When you aren’t dressed up and nice looking, that is the real you. When a person can love you at 7am and your sleepy, with messy hair, pajamas and bad breath, that is real love.

The last quote, I was surprised to read in my science textbook. It is the perfect analogy for acids and bases. It is very true with humans. I am who I am, but if I’m hanging with my parents compared to my friends I will act different.

Do you have a vision? A vision is power, a purpose, a goal. At Church we were talking about why people go to church. I realized that one reason why people don’t go to church is because it lacks a vision, or it has the wrong version. As Pete Greig says “The vision is JESUS–obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.” Now if a church doesn’t have a vision that is Jesus, or centered around Jesus, they have nothing. They will go nowhere and influence no one. What about you? Do you have a vision? I have a vision, the vision to influence as many people as I can for Christ. To live like Jesus would. I have dreams about things. An open church were art is loved and accepted and done by all members. I would love to start a church specifically more centered around dance. Rather than having pews, there would be an open dance floor and it would be surrounded by couches. Then on days we weren’t using the church we would let other bands come in and rock! It would be perfect. That is just part of my dream. I have others. Currently my main vision is as simple as “Live for Jesus, uncaring about what others think” Or something to that extent. I just need to work on that vision and keep it in my focus. Get a vision, focus on it, live for it.