The Americans' complacency Romans 8:36

 "As it is written: "For your sake we face death every day, we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." Romans 8:36. 

     In America we are blessed with some amazing freedoms. The one freedom I want to focus on today is the freedom from persecution for our beliefs. This lack of persecution is viewed by the general population as good, but I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps the American Christian wouldn't benefit from persecution. Today around the world thousands of people are suffering because of their on going belief in Christ, but here in America we tend to go to church only when it is convenient to us. Around the world people are being imprisoned and killed for attending church every Sunday; here we have the freedom to attend every Sunday, but tend to go only if we aren't too tired. Around the world people are dying because they were caught with a Bible in their possession, and here in our youth groups our Pastors have to gripe at us over and over to bring our Bibles to church. We as the American Christians have felt safe and content for too long, and with the lack of persecution have become complacent in our worship of God. We have become apathetic to the world around us, and instead of using our freedom to help others we have spoiled our selves into believing that the freedom we were given was meant to benefit ourselves instead of others. It's time to act as if "We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered" and use our freedom to help others, and if that means suffering along with them than just remember that we should count it a blessing to suffer along side our brothers and sisters in Jesus and a blessing to suffer for The God that brought himself low and died for your sin. 

Let me show you love...

The sky blackens with threats of a storm; God's tears fall from above. A man proclaiming to be the song of God is beaten and bruised. Roman soldiers hold his hands and legs to a cross as one of their brethren ready a mallet and a nail. The soldier balances the first on his right wrist, thunder crashes, and the hammer comes down. Where his precious blood falls red spotted clover now grows. Next they balance the nail over His left wrist once again thunder crashes as the hammer falls. They move now to his feet and a final roll of thunder majestically roars as the hammer drives the nine inch steel bar into his shins splitting the bone in his legs. They now stand the cross erect and place upon his head a crown, a mocking crown of thorns, they jeeringly pretend to worship him saying "If you are truly the Prince of Heaven, call your angels to save you." As the crown is placed upon his head it begins to rain in earnest as all the angels in heaven join their King in weeping. The soldiers grew tired of standing around waiting for the man on the cross to suffocate, so after the fashion of roman crucifixion they thrust a spear into his side attempting to break his ribs so he could not breathe, but the spear missed and only increased his agony, and so it came to pass that prophecy was fulfilled saying "and not a bone will be broken" Finally after hours of suffering this man's life came to an excruciating end. As he drew his last breath he swallowed all of man kind's sin. In the moment that he did this he was heard to proclaim "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" for the spirit of God had fled from his body until atonement was paid, God could not be in the presence of sin. And so for three days this man was dead. for three days he paid an eternity's worth of torture for man's soul, so that man could be with God. And that was only the beginning...

It takes a village to raise a child

I woke up early this morning to go to work with my friend Heather, and as we were driving to her offices in Owasso, we were talking about our families, as we were talking I realized how even though my biological mother wasn't in my life, and I never considered my biological and actual parental example, that God provided a village to raise me. So many people have had such a huge influence over who I am today. As a young child in my formative years I was raised by my Grandmother (who prefers to be called grany because it makes her feel younger) and my two aunts. These two seperate influences can be seen in the way I behave today. I gained my grandmother's gift of being nosey and manipulitive, and I also gained her generosity and huge ability to care. I gained my aunts' stubborness and hard headedness as well as their love of God. Now those are just the influences inside my family, outside is where the village God provided truly takes over. My views on God, religeon and philosophy and other such things that have a huge impact over who I am today, differ from my family's views in a major way. I gained this world view collectively from my family, and the universal village God provided. Some of the "village" parents God provided for me are still in my life today, and some are not. Some are living in different states, some in different parts of the world, yet whether they are near me or not, they still impact me every time I think of them. I rejoice in God every time I find myself saying something that one of these substitute parents taught me, and everytime I say or do something that I picked up just out of habit of being around them. In fact one of these village parents is Heather who I mentioned earlier in this blog post. Another Is Flea Christensen who's house I'll be at later, and these are just two of the many people, who form my "village" that it took to raise a child. Who is in your "village"?

In the Arms of My Father

This morning I was sitting in the Church at Battle Creek, listening to Pastor Alex Himaya preach. The sermon today was over forgiveness. Lately I've found myself struggling in the area of forgiveness, particularly with my biological father. I lived with him for 16 years, and he was a big drinker and used to be on drugs. A lot of the choices he made effected my life in detrimental ways, and this resulted in large amounts of emotional abuse and pain. This last week has been a huge challenge for me, because my adoptive parents were out of town on a cruise, and my biological father knew that they were gone, and he knows where I live. I was terrified that he was going to show up drunk and try and make me leave with him. While I knew this was illogical, i wasn't thinking logically. So, needless to say I spent the first few nights sleeping in the living room with the tv and all the lights on. finally on the third night I realized that I couldn't live in fear of my father forever. So I started praying. I literally walked around the house speaking aloud to God. I asked Him to deliver me from fear, and His reply was that I needed to speak to my dad. He told me that I didn't need to talk to my father about the past, I didn't need to make more painful memories. I think maybe God wants me to talk to my father to show me that he's only a human, and no human deserves that much fear, no one but God should affect my life that deeply. So today, sitting in church today listening to my pastor tell parents to take their children aside individually and ask for their children's forgiveness for whatever wrongs they've committed, I began to cry, because while my father has hurt me, I've also hurt my eternal father, and He's forgiven me over and over and over and over etc. Now it's my turn, and I have to decide if i'm going to take the gift of forgiveness and pay it forward, or be selfish and harbor bitterness for someone who hurt me. Toward the end of the sermon, I began hoping that Alex would open the alter for prayer. He did. I stood up, my heart pounding, and made my way to the alter, as I began to kneel and made it to the step on the alter, and just fell down balling my eyes out. After the first few seconds, I felt my aunt Dennisa come behind me and begin praying with me. I don't know how long I was on the alter, but the only words I spoke to God were:"Lord, I don't know what to say right now, so You speak." after that I just laid there in my Abba's arms and in my Aunt's arms. God did speak to me after I said that. He told me that I am a son of THE KING, and that's not something to take lightly. He told me that it was going to be a process to forgive some of the deepest hurts that I'm dealing with, but he promised me that He would be there supporting me step by step being my Father.  So this was my week, and I hope that someone else will be able to benefit from my experience.

Of God, insecurity, and humility.

I've had to learn to accept what God's will is for me this weekend. I was at a debate tournament, and despite all of my hard work and effort, I didn't qualify in either of the events I entered in. In LD debate, I won 2 of four of the my debate rounds, and in my standard oratory I only know that I made it to the finals, and my coach said that I was VERY close to qualifying in that event. However, when I was sitting in the awards ceremony, I was really upset with my self thoughts such as "you're not good enough," or "you didn't do your best" were shooting like wild fire through my mind. Finally I came to the conclusion that God must have other plans for me on the weekend of regionals. So, I'm re-learning that I need to take into account what God has in mind, who am I to argue with his thoughts. I'm also re-learning, that I need to nip insecurities in the bud long before I dwell on them. Even when the thoughts I mentioned before were running through my mind, I should have been thinking that I did do my best, and that I put my heart and soul into my performances. It was just a matter of the judges not liking my performance as much as I did. What I'm really struggling with now is trying not to be bitter and working on being humble. I do feel like I was one of 2 or 3 standard oratories that were of any consequence. I know that this isn't the way to view this, but it's still irritating. I'm working on developing some humility.

surrounded by tempting merchandise

     So recently I read a book called "Dateable" and in this book it presented an idea that I've agreed with for a long time. The idea was, that women, while complaining about men all being gross and drooling over them, set themselves up for this. They do so, by dressing in skimpy outfits and displaying the area's of their bodies that turn men on. All I have to say to this is, Don't display the goods if you don't want potential customers to window shop. If you don't want men to look at you in a sexual light, then don't dress in clothing that is meant to show off your junk.
    Don't get me wrong ladies, I'm not saying that men should treat you like a peace of meat even if you are wearing that type of clothing. However, it is human nature, and while as Christians we are called to rise above our human nature you have to make it as easy on us as possible. There's no way you can expect a man not to stare at you in a too tight mini-skirt and a shirt that displays a lot of cleavage.
     These are just my thoughts and opinions, and I don't intend them to sound rude but the truth hurts. I hope that  someone has learned from my random musings over this topic, and I hope that women better understand that men aren't pigs, just shoppers walking through a store surrounded by tempting merchandise.