Fellow Readers,
Hello again. I am going to try something different with this post. Instead of my usual rambling on about pointless stuff that most of y'all probably do not care about, I am just going to start with what I am calling, "the meat" of the post. After all, the meat is what I write these things for anyhow. I just like to fluff it up with a little anecdote or whatnot. I do feel like not all of those stories are completely pointless. But, I could understand how most of you would just get tired of reading them. I mean, sometimes I just go on, and on, and on, seemingly never ending, and I am sure that leaves you screaming in your mind, "JUST GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!" And I respect that. Which is why this time, I have decided not to babble.
So, with all of that being said, here we go.
When I was talking to my girlfriend (Yes, you read that correctly. I currently just started a relationship with someone. Things are going pretty well so far. Thanks for asking.) about things we both are struggling with, the common theme that kept coming up was intentionality. What do I mean by this? Well, I think as human beings, we need to be intentional in our actions and how we treat people. Let me unpack that even further. We often times have feelings about people (i.e. what they mean to us, or how they have impacted our lives, etc.) and we never tell them those feelings. A lot of times, we think they will always be around, and then by some horrific event (usually death) they are gone and we do not get the chance to tell them what they meant to us. I think (and this definitely applies to me here) a lot of the reasons why we do not tell people those things are because of how society has molded us. Guys, we are not supposed to share feelings like or else we will come off as a "sissy" or any other slur that means we are not manly. Why?? Wouldn't you want to know if you made an impact on someone's life? Wouldn't you want to know that someone loves you? Wouldn't you want to know that all of your effort you have been putting into a relationship with someone hasn't been for not? I know I would want to know those things. So, why don't we tell people those things when we are feeling them? I love this example from the book, Tuesdays With Morrie. It is a fantastic book. If you ever get the chance to read it, I highly encourage you to. Anyway, in the book, Morrie is dying from ALS. So, he decided he wanted to have a "living funeral." What he wanted was to have a funeral while he was still alive. His reasoning was because at funerals, often times every person that speaks about the late whomever, has nothing but delightful things to say. So, he wanted to have a "funeral" for him, that he could attend so he could hear all of the good things people had to say about him. I think that is an awesome idea! We too often wait until someone dies to talk about how much they impacted our lives and how much they meant to us. How much better would things be if we lived life with this living funeral concept? What if we didn't wait until someone was out of our lives to tell them how much we enjoyed having them in our lives? I just think that would be awesome.
Another way we can be intentional in our lives is in our conversations with people, especially when we are first meeting someone. I know I get caught asking the same questions every time I meet someone new, most likely not even listening for their answers, just waiting until I can get the last question on my list out, and then somehow end the conversation. That is not right. That is not respecting that person at all, nor is it showing them love. But, I do it so frequently. Another example is if I see somebody I know somewhere, but I do not really want to talk to them, so I kind of duck-and-cover, or go out of my way to hopefully not be seen by them so I don't have to talk to them. Granted, I am not saying you have to go up to every person you see that you know and strike up a conversation with them, but don't go out of your way to avoid them. Just keep going how you are going, and if they happen to stop you and want to talk (and you have the time to talk) then talk with them. Be polite. You don't know what could be going on in their lives, or how much they just want to talk to someone. You literally could make someone's day by just talking to them. It is that simple.
Being intentional in our relationships is such an easy concept, but can be so hard to grasp. Whether it is society telling us not to, or our minds, we spend a lot of time in our relationships not being purposeful. If someone has impacted your life, tell them. Tell the people you love that you love them. Strike up a conversation with someone, and actually care about their response. Listen to them.
As always, thank you all again for reading.
Signing off.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
What Does Chevy Chase Have to Do with My Faith?
Fellow Readers,
Daylight savings time approaches! My excitement may elude some of you all, but I am stoked for more daylight. There is so much more time for activities (my little take on a well-known quote from the movie, Stepbrothers, for those of you who are fans of Will Ferrell, or John C. Riley, whatever floats your boat). I hope you all have been well (even though I have no idea who "you all" are. Nevertheless, why would I hope you all have not been doing well? I am not that self-centered, depending on who you ask I suppose, though). For all of my Tennessee Tech peeps, and any other Tennessee Board of Regents students, Spring Break is just about upon us. Who is excited for that? I know I am much looking forward to it. Anybody have any good plans? I believe I will be doing next to nothing all spring break, which compared to my semester so far...okay, that pretty much compares accordingly with the rest of my semester. I feel like I have not had a very tough workload all year (I am not trying to brag about it; it probably is more of my inability to devote really any emotional energy toward my current school work, resulting in this illusion of "no" school work. Do not fret though-especially you, mom, if you are reading-I do make sure I get my work done when it is do. I just find myself sort of coasting on through). In other news, which may be shocking to some of you (hopefully not too shocking), I have sort of, kind of, maybe have started seeing someone.*The sound of tears hitting the floor from the general female population* Let us not get ahead of ourselves, however, it has just been a couple of dates. I am enjoying it so far, though. It took a little time to dust off the good ole book of moves entitled, Andrew: Gentleman (should be called, Andrew: Full of Himself), but it is just like riding a bike-you never forget it. I am looking forward to discovering where this relationship can go.
After my previous post, 20 students, including myself, from our RUF group at Tech joined hundreds of other RUF-ers at RUF Winter Conference in Jasper, GA. It was a totally awesome weekend filled with fellowship and worship. The experience with Winter Conference, as well as within the small group I am leading, and also including just what I have experienced in my time being a part of RUF, has made me realize how important Community is (I am not referring to the NBC comedy series, Community). I have come to understand as a believer, we need community. We need a community of believers that know what struggles we face on a daily basis. We need people we can share our struggles with and can work through them together. We need a group of believers that put each other before themselves and will do anything to help each other when anyone is down. We need to love each other (for our purpose here, by "each other" I am referring to the believers we talk with and share community with, but in the grand scheme of things, we need to love EVERYONE, believer or not, we are called to love). What I have gained from my small group: I have a group of guys, struggling with the same things I am, wanting to chase after God, and just guys whose company I just enjoy. Our relationships have grown so much since starting the small group. This may be hard to understand, but having that closeness with those guys, makes it easy to confess my sins and struggles. I want them to know how I think I have failed. Why? Why would I want these guys who seemingly like me and are friends with me, to know I suck? That is the beauty of Community: knowing that each person also sucks just as much as you, makes it easier to accept your "suckage" and figure out where to go next. I recently talked with someone who told me they do not know if they know what love is, or if they do, they do not really feel it. Well, I would say that having a community of believers surrounding you and sharing with you your doubts and struggles and sins, certainly is love. Loving someone is not doing anything you can to make them happy. No, love is doing and/or giving someone what they NEED. *Example: if I liked a girl and told my friend all about her and how much I like her, then he talks to that girl and asks her about me, and she tells him that I am an idiot and she would never date me, how would my friend show love to me? What would make me happy, of course, would be for him to encourage me to continue pursuing her and never telling me what she said. What would be loving me would be him saying, "Andrew, she thinks you are stupid. You do not have a chance with her. But, hey, I love you, man." We should not lie to each other to avoid heartache, but rather, we should be there to help each other THROUGH the heartache. That is love.* For any of those reading who feel like they are alone, or feel un-loved, I encourage you to get into a church somewhere. If you already do go to church somewhere, I encourage you to get more involved: join a small group or Bible study. Get with people who know what you are going through in your daily struggle to live a faithful life. How could all of our lives not be improved if we surround ourselves with people who love us? That is all I have for now folks. Thank you for reading.
Signing off.
Daylight savings time approaches! My excitement may elude some of you all, but I am stoked for more daylight. There is so much more time for activities (my little take on a well-known quote from the movie, Stepbrothers, for those of you who are fans of Will Ferrell, or John C. Riley, whatever floats your boat). I hope you all have been well (even though I have no idea who "you all" are. Nevertheless, why would I hope you all have not been doing well? I am not that self-centered, depending on who you ask I suppose, though). For all of my Tennessee Tech peeps, and any other Tennessee Board of Regents students, Spring Break is just about upon us. Who is excited for that? I know I am much looking forward to it. Anybody have any good plans? I believe I will be doing next to nothing all spring break, which compared to my semester so far...okay, that pretty much compares accordingly with the rest of my semester. I feel like I have not had a very tough workload all year (I am not trying to brag about it; it probably is more of my inability to devote really any emotional energy toward my current school work, resulting in this illusion of "no" school work. Do not fret though-especially you, mom, if you are reading-I do make sure I get my work done when it is do. I just find myself sort of coasting on through). In other news, which may be shocking to some of you (hopefully not too shocking), I have sort of, kind of, maybe have started seeing someone.*The sound of tears hitting the floor from the general female population* Let us not get ahead of ourselves, however, it has just been a couple of dates. I am enjoying it so far, though. It took a little time to dust off the good ole book of moves entitled, Andrew: Gentleman (should be called, Andrew: Full of Himself), but it is just like riding a bike-you never forget it. I am looking forward to discovering where this relationship can go.
After my previous post, 20 students, including myself, from our RUF group at Tech joined hundreds of other RUF-ers at RUF Winter Conference in Jasper, GA. It was a totally awesome weekend filled with fellowship and worship. The experience with Winter Conference, as well as within the small group I am leading, and also including just what I have experienced in my time being a part of RUF, has made me realize how important Community is (I am not referring to the NBC comedy series, Community). I have come to understand as a believer, we need community. We need a community of believers that know what struggles we face on a daily basis. We need people we can share our struggles with and can work through them together. We need a group of believers that put each other before themselves and will do anything to help each other when anyone is down. We need to love each other (for our purpose here, by "each other" I am referring to the believers we talk with and share community with, but in the grand scheme of things, we need to love EVERYONE, believer or not, we are called to love). What I have gained from my small group: I have a group of guys, struggling with the same things I am, wanting to chase after God, and just guys whose company I just enjoy. Our relationships have grown so much since starting the small group. This may be hard to understand, but having that closeness with those guys, makes it easy to confess my sins and struggles. I want them to know how I think I have failed. Why? Why would I want these guys who seemingly like me and are friends with me, to know I suck? That is the beauty of Community: knowing that each person also sucks just as much as you, makes it easier to accept your "suckage" and figure out where to go next. I recently talked with someone who told me they do not know if they know what love is, or if they do, they do not really feel it. Well, I would say that having a community of believers surrounding you and sharing with you your doubts and struggles and sins, certainly is love. Loving someone is not doing anything you can to make them happy. No, love is doing and/or giving someone what they NEED. *Example: if I liked a girl and told my friend all about her and how much I like her, then he talks to that girl and asks her about me, and she tells him that I am an idiot and she would never date me, how would my friend show love to me? What would make me happy, of course, would be for him to encourage me to continue pursuing her and never telling me what she said. What would be loving me would be him saying, "Andrew, she thinks you are stupid. You do not have a chance with her. But, hey, I love you, man." We should not lie to each other to avoid heartache, but rather, we should be there to help each other THROUGH the heartache. That is love.* For any of those reading who feel like they are alone, or feel un-loved, I encourage you to get into a church somewhere. If you already do go to church somewhere, I encourage you to get more involved: join a small group or Bible study. Get with people who know what you are going through in your daily struggle to live a faithful life. How could all of our lives not be improved if we surround ourselves with people who love us? That is all I have for now folks. Thank you for reading.
Signing off.
Friday, February 14, 2014
"All the Single Ladies. All the Single Ladies." All the Single...Me
Fellow Readers,
Hello again. I hope all is well. I have a feeling this will be a pretty quick post. Especially because I have a class in a short while. Why do I always write after 2:00 AM? Who am I kidding, though? When has anything I have talked about ever been "quick?" Just look at the amount of rhetorical questions I pose: they could amount to at least 25% of my posts, I am sure. Anyways, I just wanted to talk about relationships and whatnot. I have recently seen numerous blog posts about marriage and such, whether it being married, getting engaged, or single and looking (probably looking harder than one should). So, why not join the exhausted list of relationship posts, right? I like to attempt to stay hip, you know. I have to try to appeal to the younger audience every-now-and-then. So let us get at it, then. Relationships. More specifically, romantic relationships.
Webster defines a relationship as the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other. For our purposes, obviously, we will use people. I have nothing against organizations. I just do not think they will tie into what we have got going on here. Webster decides to further his definition by stating a relationship is also an emotional and sexual association between two people. Okay Noah (Webster's first name, for those who do not know him personally), way to make things awkward. I for sure know that using organizations in this example would not be appropriate. We are dealing with an entirely different situation when we talk about the sexual associations between two or more organizations, which may or may not be illegal. At any rate, moving on. Let me see if I can find my point in all of this verbiage. Romantic relationships are a huge deal in our every day lives, regardless of your age (assuming you are old enough to know what romance is. I will not put an actual age on that, because it differs from person-to-person). So, let us dig deeper into those definitions. Beginning with the second (because, why not? Starting with the first thing in a series is so mainstream), relationships have a ton to do with emotions, and in today's society, sex is also big. What kind of emotions are you sharing, or would share (I would never leave out my fellow single homies), with your romantic partner? Hopefully, all of them. If you are not, I would question the validity of your relationship with that person. A relationship can never be just happy all of the time and butterflies and unicorns and what have you. It is just impossible to do. There are just going to be those days, or that one thing you disagree on, etc. Conversely, a relationship will never last if all you share are poor emotions. What would be the point? However, a relationship that shares the good and the bad, and still want nothing else in this world but you partner, that could work. (DISCLAIMER: I do not consider myself a relationship guru: this whole post is just what I personally think. Take it as you will.) I will save the sex part for later. Moving on to the first definition-a relationship is the way two people regard and behave towards each other. How do you behave towards your partner? How do you regard your partner? Do you try to control them, or do you trust them? Do you value and cherish your partner, realizing by some incredible force you have managed to find this partner, or do you halfheartedly sit back "knowing" you have your partner locked down, putting in no effort? Relationships take constant work and a constant expression of how much you care about your partner and how thankful you are for them. We are in no way owed a romantic partner, so do not act like you are done when you have yours. Never stop pursuing your partner.
Now, the moment you all have been waiting for: Sex. For most of you reading this, you know that I am a Christian. Therefore, I choose to follow what the Bible says about sex: it is a no-go outside of marriage. I do not think that is limited to Christians, nor am I condemning anyone who claims to be a Christian and has had premarital sex. That is not the point. The point is why I think we should follow that rule. There is no doubt sex is an amazing thing to be shared with your partner. The Bible, therefore God, calls us to have sex (Gen. 1:28- be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it. *rough paraphrase* Prov. 5: 18-19-Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. *Yep, the Bible indeed says that). The thing He also calls us to do, is to only have sex with our husband or wife, leaving sex outside of marriage as adulteress behavior, thus a sexual sin. That is a red flag for me when I think about sex. Do not do it outside of marriage. For those who do not claim to be Christian, and Christians as well; why should we wait until marriage to have sex? I like to believe there is a sense of pride to be had, if you can tell your new husband or wife that you waited for them; you valued them so much that you preserved yourself for them; you wanted to share the most intimate thing two people can share with only them. That is something special, and sadly all too forgotten in the world we live in today.
So, where do we go from here? For those who are currently in a romantic relationship: love your partner. Do not take them for granted. If you are a guy, act as if you are still trying to muster up that courage to ask her out; do not stop pursuing her; still try to come up with those creative dates that are going to sweep her off of her feet. Women: pursue your man. Knock him off his guard; you take him out on a date; do not stop being that girl who made him feel fuzzy on the inside. Couples: wait for each other; remain abstinent. Christian couples: center your relationship on Jesus. Dig in His word together; pray together; push each other closer to Him. If you do so, you will find that you are not perfect for your partner and they are not perfect for you, but Jesus is perfect for both of you and the perfect example of what love is.
For all my single friends, what is next? Do not get desperate. I know there is this strong desire inside of you to find a partner, trust me. But, you have to be patient. Still try (a relationship is not just going to happen out of no where), but do not force yourself to like someone just because you think they may like you. Take the time to get to know other people. Christian single peeps: take this time to build your relationship with Jesus. Dig in His word; pray; pursue the Lord. Plan those cheesy, creative dates with the Big Guy upstairs. FYI: no one will love you more, so why not spend time with that relationship? Prepare your heart for your future partner. Remain abstinent.
If you have stuck with me 'til now, thank you for reading. I told ya I was kidding myself when I thought this could be quick. Again, I will say I am no expert in relationships. I hope this post will challenge you to evaluate how you are working in your relationships. I hope this post can help you grow. I apologize if I offended anyone. I know sex can be a very touchy, tabooish topic. If you did feel convicted by some of this stuff, I encourage you to not run away from it, but to flat out throw it out into the open. Face it. Pray about it. Feel free to contact me about anything. I am not without sin. Let's share our struggles people! Also, feel free to challenge anything I put in here. I would love to hear people's opinions on this stuff.
Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
Hello again. I hope all is well. I have a feeling this will be a pretty quick post. Especially because I have a class in a short while. Why do I always write after 2:00 AM? Who am I kidding, though? When has anything I have talked about ever been "quick?" Just look at the amount of rhetorical questions I pose: they could amount to at least 25% of my posts, I am sure. Anyways, I just wanted to talk about relationships and whatnot. I have recently seen numerous blog posts about marriage and such, whether it being married, getting engaged, or single and looking (probably looking harder than one should). So, why not join the exhausted list of relationship posts, right? I like to attempt to stay hip, you know. I have to try to appeal to the younger audience every-now-and-then. So let us get at it, then. Relationships. More specifically, romantic relationships.
Webster defines a relationship as the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other. For our purposes, obviously, we will use people. I have nothing against organizations. I just do not think they will tie into what we have got going on here. Webster decides to further his definition by stating a relationship is also an emotional and sexual association between two people. Okay Noah (Webster's first name, for those who do not know him personally), way to make things awkward. I for sure know that using organizations in this example would not be appropriate. We are dealing with an entirely different situation when we talk about the sexual associations between two or more organizations, which may or may not be illegal. At any rate, moving on. Let me see if I can find my point in all of this verbiage. Romantic relationships are a huge deal in our every day lives, regardless of your age (assuming you are old enough to know what romance is. I will not put an actual age on that, because it differs from person-to-person). So, let us dig deeper into those definitions. Beginning with the second (because, why not? Starting with the first thing in a series is so mainstream), relationships have a ton to do with emotions, and in today's society, sex is also big. What kind of emotions are you sharing, or would share (I would never leave out my fellow single homies), with your romantic partner? Hopefully, all of them. If you are not, I would question the validity of your relationship with that person. A relationship can never be just happy all of the time and butterflies and unicorns and what have you. It is just impossible to do. There are just going to be those days, or that one thing you disagree on, etc. Conversely, a relationship will never last if all you share are poor emotions. What would be the point? However, a relationship that shares the good and the bad, and still want nothing else in this world but you partner, that could work. (DISCLAIMER: I do not consider myself a relationship guru: this whole post is just what I personally think. Take it as you will.) I will save the sex part for later. Moving on to the first definition-a relationship is the way two people regard and behave towards each other. How do you behave towards your partner? How do you regard your partner? Do you try to control them, or do you trust them? Do you value and cherish your partner, realizing by some incredible force you have managed to find this partner, or do you halfheartedly sit back "knowing" you have your partner locked down, putting in no effort? Relationships take constant work and a constant expression of how much you care about your partner and how thankful you are for them. We are in no way owed a romantic partner, so do not act like you are done when you have yours. Never stop pursuing your partner.
Now, the moment you all have been waiting for: Sex. For most of you reading this, you know that I am a Christian. Therefore, I choose to follow what the Bible says about sex: it is a no-go outside of marriage. I do not think that is limited to Christians, nor am I condemning anyone who claims to be a Christian and has had premarital sex. That is not the point. The point is why I think we should follow that rule. There is no doubt sex is an amazing thing to be shared with your partner. The Bible, therefore God, calls us to have sex (Gen. 1:28- be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and have dominion over it. *rough paraphrase* Prov. 5: 18-19-Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. *Yep, the Bible indeed says that). The thing He also calls us to do, is to only have sex with our husband or wife, leaving sex outside of marriage as adulteress behavior, thus a sexual sin. That is a red flag for me when I think about sex. Do not do it outside of marriage. For those who do not claim to be Christian, and Christians as well; why should we wait until marriage to have sex? I like to believe there is a sense of pride to be had, if you can tell your new husband or wife that you waited for them; you valued them so much that you preserved yourself for them; you wanted to share the most intimate thing two people can share with only them. That is something special, and sadly all too forgotten in the world we live in today.
So, where do we go from here? For those who are currently in a romantic relationship: love your partner. Do not take them for granted. If you are a guy, act as if you are still trying to muster up that courage to ask her out; do not stop pursuing her; still try to come up with those creative dates that are going to sweep her off of her feet. Women: pursue your man. Knock him off his guard; you take him out on a date; do not stop being that girl who made him feel fuzzy on the inside. Couples: wait for each other; remain abstinent. Christian couples: center your relationship on Jesus. Dig in His word together; pray together; push each other closer to Him. If you do so, you will find that you are not perfect for your partner and they are not perfect for you, but Jesus is perfect for both of you and the perfect example of what love is.
For all my single friends, what is next? Do not get desperate. I know there is this strong desire inside of you to find a partner, trust me. But, you have to be patient. Still try (a relationship is not just going to happen out of no where), but do not force yourself to like someone just because you think they may like you. Take the time to get to know other people. Christian single peeps: take this time to build your relationship with Jesus. Dig in His word; pray; pursue the Lord. Plan those cheesy, creative dates with the Big Guy upstairs. FYI: no one will love you more, so why not spend time with that relationship? Prepare your heart for your future partner. Remain abstinent.
If you have stuck with me 'til now, thank you for reading. I told ya I was kidding myself when I thought this could be quick. Again, I will say I am no expert in relationships. I hope this post will challenge you to evaluate how you are working in your relationships. I hope this post can help you grow. I apologize if I offended anyone. I know sex can be a very touchy, tabooish topic. If you did feel convicted by some of this stuff, I encourage you to not run away from it, but to flat out throw it out into the open. Face it. Pray about it. Feel free to contact me about anything. I am not without sin. Let's share our struggles people! Also, feel free to challenge anything I put in here. I would love to hear people's opinions on this stuff.
Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
"Honesty Hour" Revisited
Fellow Readers,
Hello again. I hope everyone is doing well. For most of you (assuming most of you are college students, no reason, just assuming), school has started back and is running strong. It is about that time for tests to start rolling in. For that, I say, "Good luck." I also say, "Thank you," because you have taken the time away from your studies to take a little glance at my blog here. Thank you, as well, to everyone else who is taking the time to detach from your busy day to read my post. It really does mean a lot for all of you guys to support me like that. So, thanks again alls yous guys (my feeble attempt at some obscure, northernish accent, maybe that of a Michagonian? I doubt that is what they call themselves...). For any of you who care-also, any of you who do not care, because let's face the facts here: my blog, you are reading it, you must read what I put down, hence no control on your part other than not reading, please stay on board, don't leave, I will not put anything too uninteresting in here, I am really just rambling at this point to extend what I am calling, "the world's longest interjection of a sentence set off by hyphens," okay, I will continue, no more of this, I promise, at least for this sentence-so far, my semester is starting off pretty strongly. The workload in my classes is pretty minimal so far. Tonight, was the first time I have worked all semester, so I have had a lot of free time on my hands-which has its pros and cons (no further elaboration, you will just have to determine for yourself how not working can have its pros and cons). In that free time, I often go and work out with a good friend of mine. It has been good so far; we just started an actual regimen outside of just our usual cardiovascular workout. Needless to say, we are both pretty sore. But, it is going to pay off in dividends in a little while. Also, in a few hours I will be headed off to North Carolina with a few friends for a day of skiing. I know, I am up pretty late considering we are leaving Cooke-vegas at 4:45 in the A-M, but I am just not tired. It will be my first adventure at skiing, so hopefully I do not just fall all day. Wish me luck! That pretty much catches you all up on what has gone down this semester so far: just hanging out with friends, going to class (on most days...), not working too much, working out a little bit, pretty much just the usual.
Now, we shall move onto the "revisitaion" of my previous post. I last left off in a pretty darkish time. A quick synopsis: I demeaned women, lacked some spiritual food, was going through the motions, sucked. Yep, that pretty much sums that up well. "Andrew, how have you used that last post a.k.a. confession to move forward?" I am glad you asked that question. Quickly, "thank you," again, is in order for all of you who offered words of encouragement, prayers, or both, for me. It was really humbling to see others sharing in my struggles. I have to be honest, it did take a while for me to do anything with that last post. I spent the entirety of my Christmas break not changing anything in my life. It actually somewhat worsened, since I was not going to RUF anymore while we were out of school. That pretty much guaranteed I was not getting fed spiritually. However, right before school started back up, coinciding with the loads of effervescent people making New Year's Resolutions, I decided it was time to stop wallowing in my own self-pity and start to work on me. The first step-stop doing things for me. What? Working on me by not doing things for me? That was a hard concept to follow, but, it was simple: The reason I was wallowing, was because I was selfish and was tied to my own desires. The solution was to attempt to tie myself to the Lord's desires. So, I embarked on, what the Christian radio stations are calling, a New Year's Revolution. Unlike the radio stations suggest, I was not just choosing to listen to only Christian music for 30 days, but instead, recommitting myself to the Lord. My first step was to repent of my sin. The most important part of that step was to consciously accept that what Jesus did on the cross was ENOUGH. I did not have to feel terrible about all of the crap I did, because He paid the ultimate price so that I may be clean. What I have realized more recently, as recent as today actually, is when I wallow in my sin, feeling depressed, afraid to even pray because I know I have disappointed Him, I actually am saying I do not think what You did was enough, I do not trust Your grace atones. That is crazy! Why would I be hiding my face from Him, when I should be running towards Him crying out to Him to take charge in my life?! Now, I have to take the time here to add in that realization does not mean that I or anyone else should just freely sin and have no care about it, because we are covered. That is not what I am saying at all. However, we do not have to sink into a depression about it either, but repent and rejoice in the fact that His grace is strong enough to wash us clean. The second step of my revolution was to get fed. Not food fed, although that is also important, but, spiritually fed. I needed to get into His word. This took a little time to get into, but I can now say that I am striving to stay in the word and really study it, not just read it. I am currently working through Acts, 1 John, and Romans. Those all are part of various Bible studies I am participating in. Being in the word is already paying off. Through His word, He is shining His light on all the dark and filth in my heart, and I am beginning to look at everything I do differently. I am starting to realize more sin in my life and things I need to work on that I never used to think about. One important thing He is showing me is I do not just need to focus on the "Do Not's" checklist, but I also need to spend time on the "Do's" checklist. What I mean is: I do not only need to think about what I should not do or act like (i.e. sin), but I need to also focus on what He has called us to do (i.e. evangelize and just love each other). I often find myself mentally going through the "Do Not's" checklist throughout the day, but never considering that "Do's" checklist. What would our days look like when we started focusing on the do's as well? It is pretty encouraging to think about. The final step in my revolution is to become active, not just go through the motions. I need to be a seller too, not just a consumer. I often find myself riding shotgun in my spiritual life, rather than grabbing the wheel and pressing on the gas. "Andrew, please stop the metaphors and tell us what you mean." Okay, okay. Hold your horses. I will "flesh that out." (I love you Jeff.) What I am trying to say here is this: For me, I spent a lot of the last six months or so just living passively in the religious world. I went to RUF, listened to the message (sometimes), but never applied it to my life. I heard messages either through friends, various social media outlets, or Christian radio (remember, I was not reading my Bible), but I never would "pick it up, and run with it." The change has to be active. When I read His word, I need to take the time to think why He is revealing it to me at this time, and how it applies to my spiritual growth and life. If I do that, I allow His truth to change my heart and show me how to walk-the-walk. All I can do now is stick to the plan, and allow Him to overflow my heart. I have a lot of room to grow.
This post was in no way an attempt to boast. I still struggle with many of the same things I struggled with stated in my last post. Thankfully, I now know I do not have to shame myself and hide from the Lord. His grace is way more than enough, and way more than I deserve. For that, I give Him praise and just say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I hope this post can be encouraging to you all and if any of you want to talk about anything, you are always free to hit me up on that Facebook (or Twitter I suppose, it is just so hard with 140 characters, and no one ever uses DM do they? Let's be real.). Seriously though, I totally would love to talk with anyone about any of this kind of stuff, or anything else. Thank you all so much for reading.
"My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." -1 John 2:1-2
Signing off.
Hello again. I hope everyone is doing well. For most of you (assuming most of you are college students, no reason, just assuming), school has started back and is running strong. It is about that time for tests to start rolling in. For that, I say, "Good luck." I also say, "Thank you," because you have taken the time away from your studies to take a little glance at my blog here. Thank you, as well, to everyone else who is taking the time to detach from your busy day to read my post. It really does mean a lot for all of you guys to support me like that. So, thanks again alls yous guys (my feeble attempt at some obscure, northernish accent, maybe that of a Michagonian? I doubt that is what they call themselves...). For any of you who care-also, any of you who do not care, because let's face the facts here: my blog, you are reading it, you must read what I put down, hence no control on your part other than not reading, please stay on board, don't leave, I will not put anything too uninteresting in here, I am really just rambling at this point to extend what I am calling, "the world's longest interjection of a sentence set off by hyphens," okay, I will continue, no more of this, I promise, at least for this sentence-so far, my semester is starting off pretty strongly. The workload in my classes is pretty minimal so far. Tonight, was the first time I have worked all semester, so I have had a lot of free time on my hands-which has its pros and cons (no further elaboration, you will just have to determine for yourself how not working can have its pros and cons). In that free time, I often go and work out with a good friend of mine. It has been good so far; we just started an actual regimen outside of just our usual cardiovascular workout. Needless to say, we are both pretty sore. But, it is going to pay off in dividends in a little while. Also, in a few hours I will be headed off to North Carolina with a few friends for a day of skiing. I know, I am up pretty late considering we are leaving Cooke-vegas at 4:45 in the A-M, but I am just not tired. It will be my first adventure at skiing, so hopefully I do not just fall all day. Wish me luck! That pretty much catches you all up on what has gone down this semester so far: just hanging out with friends, going to class (on most days...), not working too much, working out a little bit, pretty much just the usual.
Now, we shall move onto the "revisitaion" of my previous post. I last left off in a pretty darkish time. A quick synopsis: I demeaned women, lacked some spiritual food, was going through the motions, sucked. Yep, that pretty much sums that up well. "Andrew, how have you used that last post a.k.a. confession to move forward?" I am glad you asked that question. Quickly, "thank you," again, is in order for all of you who offered words of encouragement, prayers, or both, for me. It was really humbling to see others sharing in my struggles. I have to be honest, it did take a while for me to do anything with that last post. I spent the entirety of my Christmas break not changing anything in my life. It actually somewhat worsened, since I was not going to RUF anymore while we were out of school. That pretty much guaranteed I was not getting fed spiritually. However, right before school started back up, coinciding with the loads of effervescent people making New Year's Resolutions, I decided it was time to stop wallowing in my own self-pity and start to work on me. The first step-stop doing things for me. What? Working on me by not doing things for me? That was a hard concept to follow, but, it was simple: The reason I was wallowing, was because I was selfish and was tied to my own desires. The solution was to attempt to tie myself to the Lord's desires. So, I embarked on, what the Christian radio stations are calling, a New Year's Revolution. Unlike the radio stations suggest, I was not just choosing to listen to only Christian music for 30 days, but instead, recommitting myself to the Lord. My first step was to repent of my sin. The most important part of that step was to consciously accept that what Jesus did on the cross was ENOUGH. I did not have to feel terrible about all of the crap I did, because He paid the ultimate price so that I may be clean. What I have realized more recently, as recent as today actually, is when I wallow in my sin, feeling depressed, afraid to even pray because I know I have disappointed Him, I actually am saying I do not think what You did was enough, I do not trust Your grace atones. That is crazy! Why would I be hiding my face from Him, when I should be running towards Him crying out to Him to take charge in my life?! Now, I have to take the time here to add in that realization does not mean that I or anyone else should just freely sin and have no care about it, because we are covered. That is not what I am saying at all. However, we do not have to sink into a depression about it either, but repent and rejoice in the fact that His grace is strong enough to wash us clean. The second step of my revolution was to get fed. Not food fed, although that is also important, but, spiritually fed. I needed to get into His word. This took a little time to get into, but I can now say that I am striving to stay in the word and really study it, not just read it. I am currently working through Acts, 1 John, and Romans. Those all are part of various Bible studies I am participating in. Being in the word is already paying off. Through His word, He is shining His light on all the dark and filth in my heart, and I am beginning to look at everything I do differently. I am starting to realize more sin in my life and things I need to work on that I never used to think about. One important thing He is showing me is I do not just need to focus on the "Do Not's" checklist, but I also need to spend time on the "Do's" checklist. What I mean is: I do not only need to think about what I should not do or act like (i.e. sin), but I need to also focus on what He has called us to do (i.e. evangelize and just love each other). I often find myself mentally going through the "Do Not's" checklist throughout the day, but never considering that "Do's" checklist. What would our days look like when we started focusing on the do's as well? It is pretty encouraging to think about. The final step in my revolution is to become active, not just go through the motions. I need to be a seller too, not just a consumer. I often find myself riding shotgun in my spiritual life, rather than grabbing the wheel and pressing on the gas. "Andrew, please stop the metaphors and tell us what you mean." Okay, okay. Hold your horses. I will "flesh that out." (I love you Jeff.) What I am trying to say here is this: For me, I spent a lot of the last six months or so just living passively in the religious world. I went to RUF, listened to the message (sometimes), but never applied it to my life. I heard messages either through friends, various social media outlets, or Christian radio (remember, I was not reading my Bible), but I never would "pick it up, and run with it." The change has to be active. When I read His word, I need to take the time to think why He is revealing it to me at this time, and how it applies to my spiritual growth and life. If I do that, I allow His truth to change my heart and show me how to walk-the-walk. All I can do now is stick to the plan, and allow Him to overflow my heart. I have a lot of room to grow.
This post was in no way an attempt to boast. I still struggle with many of the same things I struggled with stated in my last post. Thankfully, I now know I do not have to shame myself and hide from the Lord. His grace is way more than enough, and way more than I deserve. For that, I give Him praise and just say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I hope this post can be encouraging to you all and if any of you want to talk about anything, you are always free to hit me up on that Facebook (or Twitter I suppose, it is just so hard with 140 characters, and no one ever uses DM do they? Let's be real.). Seriously though, I totally would love to talk with anyone about any of this kind of stuff, or anything else. Thank you all so much for reading.
"My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." -1 John 2:1-2
Signing off.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Honesty Hour
Fellow Readers,
If this is your first time stumbling onto my little blog thingy here, then I welcome you. If this is not your first time, then welcome back. As those of you who read my last post, you will know that it has been over a year since I last banged out one of these entries. You may be thinking to yourselves (or to anyone else with you, I don not know who is around you presently, nor have the jurisdiction to disallow you to think aloud with them upon your pondering), "Why has it been so long? Why is he posting now? Why hasn't he kept up with this blog more often? Why does he think I have so many questions?" Well friends (and those of you I have never met), the answer to those questions is simple: I am not who I was back then. What? Yes, I am still Andrew, and I still have the same wonderful writing style (and the same arrogance), but something has changed: Back then, one could have met me and felt there was something different about me. One might have thought there was something there they wanted, something more in life. That something, actually someone, was Jesus. No, I have not stopped believing in Him, nor has He left me. But something has changed. If I am entirely honest with you all, as well as I myself, I find I am not pursuing Him as I should be. Well, pretty much not pursuing Him in general. Wow, that sounds crazy, but I am forced to agree with it. It is embarassing actually. For those of you who know me personally, know that I am a Christian and, in general, want to live a life according to His word. However, my life does not reflect that. I am faking out my life to resemble what living my life in accordance with Him would look like. I go to a campus ministry every week; I pray when I wake up, before I eat, before I go to bed, and whenever for whatever in between; I do not curse or cuss; I do not go party and get drunk or have sex or any of the sort; I even have been co-leading a Bible study. Some of you may think, "Gee Andrew, that sounds good to me. Maybe you are just being hard on yourself. We all go through down times in our faith, it will be okay." Well, let me digress a little bit here.
The campus ministry:
I attend Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) here at good ole Tennessee Tech every Wednesday night. I love this ministry and the impact it has had in my college career. I have met so many truly amazing people because of RUF. I can go on and on about what RUF has done for me and my experiences in it. Nevertheless, it seems like this semester I have been fronting myself with this facade of a "good" Christian. Honestly, I go there out of routine now more so than for the teaching. I go there to hang out with people before and after. I go there so people know I believe. But, for some reason I do not pay attention to the message. It is like I am out to eat, but only eat the free chips or rolls and then hit up the dessert at the end, but don't have any entree.
The praying:
It is true that I pray all of those times I mentioned previously, but often times I find them to be empty banter. What do I mean? Well, at night before I go to bed, I often find myself in this routine of a prayer that I do just because I feel like I should. It is usually a half-hearted checklist of points I need to hit in the prayer. I even just wonder off in my thoughts for minutes at a time, completely tabling my prayers for careless thought about trivial things. This all may sound extreme to be hard on myself
about this, but it's just another example of how I continually put myself first.
The extra-curriculars:
Like I said a little higher up on the page, I do not do those things that could lead to trouble. Even so, I may not physically be undressing women, but I do plenty of that with my eye-OFTEN. It is rare for a pretty girl to walk by and me not give her the "once-over." I also gander at pornography (there, I said it. I contemplated putting that in here for a while, but it is "Honesty Hour," and if I am to humble myself, I cannot leave out things just because I am afraid of what people might think.) off-and-on. What I want in life, above almost everything else, is to find my clichéd "soul mate." Yet, I cannot respect her, or women in general, to stop gazing on them inappropriately. I cannot respect them enough for that. I am sorry women, you deserve way more than that. You all are the most beautiful things God put on this earth and we men are lucky to have you here.
The Bible study:
When the semester began, our campus minister asked a few of us to lead Bible study small groups this semester. I immediately accepted and was ecstatic, because I had not been reading my Bible and thought it would force me to read it. I mean, how can you lead a Bible study and not read at least the passages you will be covering, right? Well, too often I find myself not reading until the day of, or just not reading at all. At the study, I would just sit like those who weren't leading it and leave it all to my co-leader. Nothing to harp on there.
So, the reason I have not kept up with this blog is because if I got on here to give some sort of message, I would be a hypocrite because I would not be walking the perverbial walk that coincides with that talk. My hopes, I suppose, are through this, if anyone is feeling these same sort of things can feel free to talk to me. I can obviously relate. Also, by putting this out there on the interweb, I can start making changes in my life. They always say admitting the problem is the first step. I just admitted those problems to the whole world, so maybe that will encourage me. I hope I did not offend anyone with this post or come off as trying to point a spotlight on me, or as any sort of formal invitation to a pitty party hosted by yours truly. By lighting the darkness in my heart can only reveal the true sin within, while also illuminating how much grace has truly atoned. Thank you all so much
for reading.
Signing off.
If this is your first time stumbling onto my little blog thingy here, then I welcome you. If this is not your first time, then welcome back. As those of you who read my last post, you will know that it has been over a year since I last banged out one of these entries. You may be thinking to yourselves (or to anyone else with you, I don not know who is around you presently, nor have the jurisdiction to disallow you to think aloud with them upon your pondering), "Why has it been so long? Why is he posting now? Why hasn't he kept up with this blog more often? Why does he think I have so many questions?" Well friends (and those of you I have never met), the answer to those questions is simple: I am not who I was back then. What? Yes, I am still Andrew, and I still have the same wonderful writing style (and the same arrogance), but something has changed: Back then, one could have met me and felt there was something different about me. One might have thought there was something there they wanted, something more in life. That something, actually someone, was Jesus. No, I have not stopped believing in Him, nor has He left me. But something has changed. If I am entirely honest with you all, as well as I myself, I find I am not pursuing Him as I should be. Well, pretty much not pursuing Him in general. Wow, that sounds crazy, but I am forced to agree with it. It is embarassing actually. For those of you who know me personally, know that I am a Christian and, in general, want to live a life according to His word. However, my life does not reflect that. I am faking out my life to resemble what living my life in accordance with Him would look like. I go to a campus ministry every week; I pray when I wake up, before I eat, before I go to bed, and whenever for whatever in between; I do not curse or cuss; I do not go party and get drunk or have sex or any of the sort; I even have been co-leading a Bible study. Some of you may think, "Gee Andrew, that sounds good to me. Maybe you are just being hard on yourself. We all go through down times in our faith, it will be okay." Well, let me digress a little bit here.
The campus ministry:
I attend Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) here at good ole Tennessee Tech every Wednesday night. I love this ministry and the impact it has had in my college career. I have met so many truly amazing people because of RUF. I can go on and on about what RUF has done for me and my experiences in it. Nevertheless, it seems like this semester I have been fronting myself with this facade of a "good" Christian. Honestly, I go there out of routine now more so than for the teaching. I go there to hang out with people before and after. I go there so people know I believe. But, for some reason I do not pay attention to the message. It is like I am out to eat, but only eat the free chips or rolls and then hit up the dessert at the end, but don't have any entree.
The praying:
It is true that I pray all of those times I mentioned previously, but often times I find them to be empty banter. What do I mean? Well, at night before I go to bed, I often find myself in this routine of a prayer that I do just because I feel like I should. It is usually a half-hearted checklist of points I need to hit in the prayer. I even just wonder off in my thoughts for minutes at a time, completely tabling my prayers for careless thought about trivial things. This all may sound extreme to be hard on myself
about this, but it's just another example of how I continually put myself first.
The extra-curriculars:
Like I said a little higher up on the page, I do not do those things that could lead to trouble. Even so, I may not physically be undressing women, but I do plenty of that with my eye-OFTEN. It is rare for a pretty girl to walk by and me not give her the "once-over." I also gander at pornography (there, I said it. I contemplated putting that in here for a while, but it is "Honesty Hour," and if I am to humble myself, I cannot leave out things just because I am afraid of what people might think.) off-and-on. What I want in life, above almost everything else, is to find my clichéd "soul mate." Yet, I cannot respect her, or women in general, to stop gazing on them inappropriately. I cannot respect them enough for that. I am sorry women, you deserve way more than that. You all are the most beautiful things God put on this earth and we men are lucky to have you here.
The Bible study:
When the semester began, our campus minister asked a few of us to lead Bible study small groups this semester. I immediately accepted and was ecstatic, because I had not been reading my Bible and thought it would force me to read it. I mean, how can you lead a Bible study and not read at least the passages you will be covering, right? Well, too often I find myself not reading until the day of, or just not reading at all. At the study, I would just sit like those who weren't leading it and leave it all to my co-leader. Nothing to harp on there.
So, the reason I have not kept up with this blog is because if I got on here to give some sort of message, I would be a hypocrite because I would not be walking the perverbial walk that coincides with that talk. My hopes, I suppose, are through this, if anyone is feeling these same sort of things can feel free to talk to me. I can obviously relate. Also, by putting this out there on the interweb, I can start making changes in my life. They always say admitting the problem is the first step. I just admitted those problems to the whole world, so maybe that will encourage me. I hope I did not offend anyone with this post or come off as trying to point a spotlight on me, or as any sort of formal invitation to a pitty party hosted by yours truly. By lighting the darkness in my heart can only reveal the true sin within, while also illuminating how much grace has truly atoned. Thank you all so much
for reading.
Signing off.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
So Much School Work, So Little Motivation
Fellow Readers,
Looking back on previous posts, I will refrain from my self-made cliche of "it's been so long since my last post. How are yall?" Instead...Hey everyone! An extended length of time has passed since my previous entry of words onto this here World Wide Web. How has my audience been? In all seriousness, it really has been an incredibly long time since my last post. School has been in full session for a couple of months now and it is brutal. It seems to me this year has been rough on everybody so far. The teachers must have convened over the summer and made a pact to give many more tests and readings than before. This is no joke people! However, it is going pretty well until this point. I am currently passing all of my classes, so all is good on the home front. Speaking of the home front, my dad is now currently residing in Peoria, Arizona! He was unemployed from April 3 of this year until the middle of July. God is the only reason we made it through that time and we are so thankful for Him and providing dad with a job. Mother, although, is still at home in Hendersonville. Needless-to-say she misses him. We all miss him. But, that is where God is using him right now and we must fully trust in His plan for our family. I would like to thank everyone who prayed for him to find a job. Anywho, he tries to come home once-a-month to visit with everybody, plane tickets aren't too cheap ya know. The anecdote part is quite short today ladies and gentlemen. Please forgive me of my lack of a whimsical tale today. I know all of yall just live to hear my stories, but I'm just really excited to get to my message!
The Message:
I am going a couple of directions with this message. First off, I've been talking with or have heard from a few people about the mistakes they have made in their pasts or what have you and how it is eating at them. We've all made mistakes. We all will continue to make mistakes. That's who we are. Our hearts are of sin. We are sinners. But, we are forgiven. Christ died for us. We are redeemed through Him. What does this mean for us? It means that nothing we have done matters. The past is the past, and it is not held against us. If we do not let it go, or think we don't deserve Jesus or that we have to compensate for our wrongs, then what did Jesus die for? His death was enough. It was enough. To cover all of our sins, past, present, and future. There are no exceptions. His grace is enough. 1 Corinthians 15:57 But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. So what is next? Trust in Him! Give it to Him! All of it, good, bad, all to Him. Psalms 34:17-19 Yes, the Lord hears the good man when he calls to Him for help, and saves him out of all his troubles. The Lord is close to those whose heart is breaking; He rescues those who are humbly sorry for their sins. The good man does not escape all troubles - he has them, too. But the Lord helps him in each and every one.
Secondly, we should pray that God reveals our sin to us. Pray that He would open your eyes to the darkest parts of your hearts to see how dirty we really are. Why? So that in doing so, it would truly open our eyes and hearts to see how amazing amd sustaining His grace is. How powerful it is that He would forgive us for everything we have done. He loves us no matter what. I love that song by Sidewalk Prophets, "You Love Me Anyway." Its message is so powerful, and so simple-He loves us no matter what. "I am Judas's kiss, but You love me anyway. I am the man who yelled out from the crowd, for Your blood to be spilled on this Earth shaken ground and I turned away with a smile on my face, with this sin in my heart tried to bury your grace...but You love me anyway..." How great is that? Those are arguably the worst acts we could have done, yet He loves us still! He loves us! We need to humble ourselves, then, knowing that He will love us anyways. Far too often, I find myself thinking of just the obvious sins in my life and how much worse other people are than me. But as I have prayed that He lightens the dark of my heart so I can see how screwed up I really am, I've become so much more aware of my sins and truly have to give thanks to God for sending His son to die for us, for me, so that I can be forgiven. If I am honest with myself, I am dirty. I lie, I cheat, I'm an adulterer, I degrade women, I strive for women, I am a hypocrite, I judge others for their sins over mine, I pursue God half-heartedly at best, I talk the talk but don't walk the walk, I love to sin. I am a sinner. But, His grace is enough. I encourage everyone to search the depths of your hearts. It sucks to think of it, but then it's so rewarding and fulfilling when you then think of how great it is that we are forgiven for every bit of it and that our Father loves us anyways. He loves us so much, He sent His only son to die for us. That's a crap ton of love. I mean, that is a lot of love! So trust in Him and seek him! Thank you all for reading.
Signing off.
The Message:
I am going a couple of directions with this message. First off, I've been talking with or have heard from a few people about the mistakes they have made in their pasts or what have you and how it is eating at them. We've all made mistakes. We all will continue to make mistakes. That's who we are. Our hearts are of sin. We are sinners. But, we are forgiven. Christ died for us. We are redeemed through Him. What does this mean for us? It means that nothing we have done matters. The past is the past, and it is not held against us. If we do not let it go, or think we don't deserve Jesus or that we have to compensate for our wrongs, then what did Jesus die for? His death was enough. It was enough. To cover all of our sins, past, present, and future. There are no exceptions. His grace is enough. 1 Corinthians 15:57 But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. So what is next? Trust in Him! Give it to Him! All of it, good, bad, all to Him. Psalms 34:17-19 Yes, the Lord hears the good man when he calls to Him for help, and saves him out of all his troubles. The Lord is close to those whose heart is breaking; He rescues those who are humbly sorry for their sins. The good man does not escape all troubles - he has them, too. But the Lord helps him in each and every one.
Secondly, we should pray that God reveals our sin to us. Pray that He would open your eyes to the darkest parts of your hearts to see how dirty we really are. Why? So that in doing so, it would truly open our eyes and hearts to see how amazing amd sustaining His grace is. How powerful it is that He would forgive us for everything we have done. He loves us no matter what. I love that song by Sidewalk Prophets, "You Love Me Anyway." Its message is so powerful, and so simple-He loves us no matter what. "I am Judas's kiss, but You love me anyway. I am the man who yelled out from the crowd, for Your blood to be spilled on this Earth shaken ground and I turned away with a smile on my face, with this sin in my heart tried to bury your grace...but You love me anyway..." How great is that? Those are arguably the worst acts we could have done, yet He loves us still! He loves us! We need to humble ourselves, then, knowing that He will love us anyways. Far too often, I find myself thinking of just the obvious sins in my life and how much worse other people are than me. But as I have prayed that He lightens the dark of my heart so I can see how screwed up I really am, I've become so much more aware of my sins and truly have to give thanks to God for sending His son to die for us, for me, so that I can be forgiven. If I am honest with myself, I am dirty. I lie, I cheat, I'm an adulterer, I degrade women, I strive for women, I am a hypocrite, I judge others for their sins over mine, I pursue God half-heartedly at best, I talk the talk but don't walk the walk, I love to sin. I am a sinner. But, His grace is enough. I encourage everyone to search the depths of your hearts. It sucks to think of it, but then it's so rewarding and fulfilling when you then think of how great it is that we are forgiven for every bit of it and that our Father loves us anyways. He loves us so much, He sent His only son to die for us. That's a crap ton of love. I mean, that is a lot of love! So trust in Him and seek him! Thank you all for reading.
Signing off.
Monday, June 18, 2012
"I Grew Up On VCR's. That Was My Time."
Fellow Readers,
Oh how it has been a while...Last post was in February! I cannot believe how the time has flown. For those of you who are seasoned readers of mine, you know I like to catch you all up on anything exciting or weird that has gone on in my life since the last post. I feel like it is safe to say that five months of catching up would just be ridiculous. So, I will just talk a little about Father's Day and maybe a couple of big things that have happened. Okay. One thing I talked about last time was unsuccessfully breaking into a pool on campus after hours. Well, we eventually did it! It was magical. We swam for a little bit, and even ended up with a canoe in it! Totally worth it. Another exciting thing to happen, is that my sister and I signed our lease on the apartment we will be living in next semester at school! I have also decided that I am switching my major from Math Teacher to either a History Teacher or a guidance counselor. I can't decide yet. Other than that, I can't think of anything else worth mentioning that would keep you all on the edge of your seats here. On to Father's Day. If you are reading this and are, or have been, or are in the process of becoming a father, Happy Father's Day! I apologize for my tardiness. Anyways, we celebrated our Pops by making him a feast of a breakfast filled with, not one, but two types of pancakes; french toast; bacon; sausage; eggs; and biscuits. Mm mmm...it was so good. Afterwards, we ventured into our past through home videos. This was not a planned event, nor even really related to Father's Day. The truth is, we just recently acquired a VCR/DVD/Recorder/Copier machine from a grand of a yard sale. After about a decade since our last one, we were extremely excited to be able to watch any of our plentiful, and dusty, VHS's-including home videos. The adventure started two nights ago in the middle of the night with my sisters and me. We were so pumped about our freshly purchased "time machine," so we decided we should hook it up and get the movies going. Well, like I mentioned, it has been a while... We tried, for two hours, hooking that thing up. We googled manuals for it and everything, but we just couldn't get the picture to work. We must have had nine different combinations of cables and hook-ups before we gave up-completely deflated. So then came yesterday, and Father. We grudgingly explained our failures to him and he chuckled a little bit and said, "Let me look at it." We laughed at that. This is a guy who never follows any instructions, thinks he can fix everything, rarely fixes anything, and who's last resort is the ever-so-popular beating method-as if hitting the contraption will fix it. So, he messes with it, and after a few minutes, has a video running in it and a picture on the screen. We were flabbergasted. Astonished, we tried to figure out how on Earth he got it so quickly, after our combined efforts on a piece of technology so simple compared to what we have nowadays failed. And his response, "I know VCR's, man. I grew up on VCR's. That was my time. Ever since '82." He was thinking one thing...."Winning!!" We were happy for him, though, and even happier for some home movies! We went from the marriage of the parentals, all the way up til about the time we reached that age where just watching us run around the back yard is exciting and new enough to want to capture it on film. It was awesome. We were all such dorks back then-and still are. It ended up being one of the best Father's Days of recent memory.
Message:
After watching those videos yesterday, it just really made me think about family and friends, and how blessed I am to have such great people in my life and to have the opportunity to spend time with them whenever I want. Looking back at our childhood(and I had known this already), our family was not made of money. But, our parents worked hard for everything they got and gave everything they had and then some, to lavish us with presents and make us happy. It made me so happy to look back and really understand how willing they were to sacrifice and how much they did. It made me proud to call them my parents-not that I wasn't proud before, it just refreshed my mind about it. "Where are you going with this Andrew?...." My point is: seeing how happy it made me to see how happy and willing they were to sacrifice and just give and love us, made me think about how much Jesus loves us, and how much he sacrificed for us, and how willing he was through all of it. And it just made me even happier and more excited, and brought me to tears. To that point, how happy does it make you to think about that? With it just being Father's Day, think about how much you love your dad and everything he gave you and how much he has loved you. Now how much greater is that feeling to know that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us even more, and sacrifices and gives us even more?!! I urge you to just take time and think about that and just say thanks to our Father. Thank you for reading. Signing off.
Oh how it has been a while...Last post was in February! I cannot believe how the time has flown. For those of you who are seasoned readers of mine, you know I like to catch you all up on anything exciting or weird that has gone on in my life since the last post. I feel like it is safe to say that five months of catching up would just be ridiculous. So, I will just talk a little about Father's Day and maybe a couple of big things that have happened. Okay. One thing I talked about last time was unsuccessfully breaking into a pool on campus after hours. Well, we eventually did it! It was magical. We swam for a little bit, and even ended up with a canoe in it! Totally worth it. Another exciting thing to happen, is that my sister and I signed our lease on the apartment we will be living in next semester at school! I have also decided that I am switching my major from Math Teacher to either a History Teacher or a guidance counselor. I can't decide yet. Other than that, I can't think of anything else worth mentioning that would keep you all on the edge of your seats here. On to Father's Day. If you are reading this and are, or have been, or are in the process of becoming a father, Happy Father's Day! I apologize for my tardiness. Anyways, we celebrated our Pops by making him a feast of a breakfast filled with, not one, but two types of pancakes; french toast; bacon; sausage; eggs; and biscuits. Mm mmm...it was so good. Afterwards, we ventured into our past through home videos. This was not a planned event, nor even really related to Father's Day. The truth is, we just recently acquired a VCR/DVD/Recorder/Copier machine from a grand of a yard sale. After about a decade since our last one, we were extremely excited to be able to watch any of our plentiful, and dusty, VHS's-including home videos. The adventure started two nights ago in the middle of the night with my sisters and me. We were so pumped about our freshly purchased "time machine," so we decided we should hook it up and get the movies going. Well, like I mentioned, it has been a while... We tried, for two hours, hooking that thing up. We googled manuals for it and everything, but we just couldn't get the picture to work. We must have had nine different combinations of cables and hook-ups before we gave up-completely deflated. So then came yesterday, and Father. We grudgingly explained our failures to him and he chuckled a little bit and said, "Let me look at it." We laughed at that. This is a guy who never follows any instructions, thinks he can fix everything, rarely fixes anything, and who's last resort is the ever-so-popular beating method-as if hitting the contraption will fix it. So, he messes with it, and after a few minutes, has a video running in it and a picture on the screen. We were flabbergasted. Astonished, we tried to figure out how on Earth he got it so quickly, after our combined efforts on a piece of technology so simple compared to what we have nowadays failed. And his response, "I know VCR's, man. I grew up on VCR's. That was my time. Ever since '82." He was thinking one thing...."Winning!!" We were happy for him, though, and even happier for some home movies! We went from the marriage of the parentals, all the way up til about the time we reached that age where just watching us run around the back yard is exciting and new enough to want to capture it on film. It was awesome. We were all such dorks back then-and still are. It ended up being one of the best Father's Days of recent memory.
Message:
After watching those videos yesterday, it just really made me think about family and friends, and how blessed I am to have such great people in my life and to have the opportunity to spend time with them whenever I want. Looking back at our childhood(and I had known this already), our family was not made of money. But, our parents worked hard for everything they got and gave everything they had and then some, to lavish us with presents and make us happy. It made me so happy to look back and really understand how willing they were to sacrifice and how much they did. It made me proud to call them my parents-not that I wasn't proud before, it just refreshed my mind about it. "Where are you going with this Andrew?...." My point is: seeing how happy it made me to see how happy and willing they were to sacrifice and just give and love us, made me think about how much Jesus loves us, and how much he sacrificed for us, and how willing he was through all of it. And it just made me even happier and more excited, and brought me to tears. To that point, how happy does it make you to think about that? With it just being Father's Day, think about how much you love your dad and everything he gave you and how much he has loved you. Now how much greater is that feeling to know that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us even more, and sacrifices and gives us even more?!! I urge you to just take time and think about that and just say thanks to our Father. Thank you for reading. Signing off.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
"Quick, Youtube How to Pick a Lock With a Bobby Pin." "Have You Seen the Ultimate Dog Teaser Video?"
Fellow readers,
Howdy! How has everyone been? I hope everybody is doing well in school right now-if you are in school. If you are not in school, then I also hope that your lives are going well...as well. How am I doing?(I know you guys were dying to ask me that.) Just as I typed that, I found out that a pillow works just as well as one of those laptop desk thingies. To answer your inquiry, I am doing very well. Thank you for asking. A lot has happened since we last parted. One unusual, yet good, thing that happened-I read a book! "Wow, that's good Andrew. We are so proud of you for being able to read." Sadly, that is what a lot of people who know me well thought when I mentioned this to them. I believe my mom even said, "What is that, like the first book you've ever read?" Close! It is no surprise to those who know me, I do not like to read. And yes, I have read more than just that one book. However, you can probably count on one hand the books I have read for pleasure, not for school(which I never read any of those anyways...oh the joys of the American school system, that you could be saved by an easy standardized test and pass your English classes without ever reading the books mandated and stressed throughout the semester.). But, the book is, Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working, by Craig Groeschel. Long story short, quote-unquote, normal, in today's society is premarital sex, partying, drinking, POLO by Ralph Lauren, iPads, texting, etc., etc., etc. The list goes on and on and on. But it very rarely includes: spending time with family, taking the time to study your Bible, praying, loving strangers, serving others, not being afraid to share your religion, saying, "no" to your friends when you feel like you shouldn't be doing what they want you to(could be anything, even saying no to dinner with them if you are trying to save money for stuff). I will hold the list at that. These things, when people see them, are weird. Anyways, the book just talks about how we get caught "following the beaten path," rather than full-force, seeking God's face and living a life for him. It is very well-written and funny, so I definitely encourage it. And I mean, if I read it for fun, anyone should be able to enjoy it. Moving on. So far this semester I have: attempted breaking and entering on campus to try to sneak into the pool after hours(probably shouldn't admit to that online, but I never actually did it so does that mean free from charges? I had accomplices!), went ghost-hunting in Monterey, TN, skipped my Friday class every Friday so far, made a putt-putt hole in my dorm room and later won the putt-putt game, stayed up countless times till at least three or four A.M. and then drug myself to class that day, got my fingers printed and a background check done-completely unrelated to the before-mentioned B&E, and that's just the beginning! For the rest of February I have Valentine's Day, two Math tests, The NEEDTOBREATHE concert, my girlfriend's play(she is a thespian), and helping lead a new campus ministry called Manna that starts up the 10th. I'm so excited and anxious for what God has in store for me this semester and am so blessed already! So that about wraps it up for the catch-up session. Now time for the message.
Message:
I already touched a little bit, while talking about the book, about not conforming to what is the standard in today's world. That's what inspired the title of this blog. We need to be the generation that cares more about our life with Christ, than what is "in." But, that is not my message today. My message today is just a simple one. I was studying my Bible today and read about the crucifixion of Jesus. This just really resonated with my this time while reading it, because of how much my relationship has grown with Him recently. It almost brought me to tears reading it. How they traded him for a criminal, with no reasoning other than His example made them feel bad about how they were living their lives. How they flogged Him and mocked Him, and were just incredibly and inconceivably cruel to Him. And He did it all for us! He endured it all for us!! So that we could be saved! So we could live a life worth living! How could you not just want to do everything you can to please someone who would do that for you? So, if you find yourself questioning, like I have myself before, "Why should I try so hard to live a 'good' Christian life? I know I'm saved." or "I'll do that, even though I know it's wrong, and will just ask for forgiveness afterwards. We are forgiven for our sins right?" The answer is simple: we are saved by His blood and forgiven for all our sins before we even commit them; but, why not do everything we possibly can to please someone who loves us so much? It becomes less of a burden, or task, when we realize how much He sacrificed and how much He loves us, and it becomes more and more of us showing how much we love Him!! Thank you all for reading, and I hope this will inspire you guys to become weird!
Signing off.
Howdy! How has everyone been? I hope everybody is doing well in school right now-if you are in school. If you are not in school, then I also hope that your lives are going well...as well. How am I doing?(I know you guys were dying to ask me that.) Just as I typed that, I found out that a pillow works just as well as one of those laptop desk thingies. To answer your inquiry, I am doing very well. Thank you for asking. A lot has happened since we last parted. One unusual, yet good, thing that happened-I read a book! "Wow, that's good Andrew. We are so proud of you for being able to read." Sadly, that is what a lot of people who know me well thought when I mentioned this to them. I believe my mom even said, "What is that, like the first book you've ever read?" Close! It is no surprise to those who know me, I do not like to read. And yes, I have read more than just that one book. However, you can probably count on one hand the books I have read for pleasure, not for school(which I never read any of those anyways...oh the joys of the American school system, that you could be saved by an easy standardized test and pass your English classes without ever reading the books mandated and stressed throughout the semester.). But, the book is, Weird: Because Normal Isn't Working, by Craig Groeschel. Long story short, quote-unquote, normal, in today's society is premarital sex, partying, drinking, POLO by Ralph Lauren, iPads, texting, etc., etc., etc. The list goes on and on and on. But it very rarely includes: spending time with family, taking the time to study your Bible, praying, loving strangers, serving others, not being afraid to share your religion, saying, "no" to your friends when you feel like you shouldn't be doing what they want you to(could be anything, even saying no to dinner with them if you are trying to save money for stuff). I will hold the list at that. These things, when people see them, are weird. Anyways, the book just talks about how we get caught "following the beaten path," rather than full-force, seeking God's face and living a life for him. It is very well-written and funny, so I definitely encourage it. And I mean, if I read it for fun, anyone should be able to enjoy it. Moving on. So far this semester I have: attempted breaking and entering on campus to try to sneak into the pool after hours(probably shouldn't admit to that online, but I never actually did it so does that mean free from charges? I had accomplices!), went ghost-hunting in Monterey, TN, skipped my Friday class every Friday so far, made a putt-putt hole in my dorm room and later won the putt-putt game, stayed up countless times till at least three or four A.M. and then drug myself to class that day, got my fingers printed and a background check done-completely unrelated to the before-mentioned B&E, and that's just the beginning! For the rest of February I have Valentine's Day, two Math tests, The NEEDTOBREATHE concert, my girlfriend's play(she is a thespian), and helping lead a new campus ministry called Manna that starts up the 10th. I'm so excited and anxious for what God has in store for me this semester and am so blessed already! So that about wraps it up for the catch-up session. Now time for the message.
Message:
I already touched a little bit, while talking about the book, about not conforming to what is the standard in today's world. That's what inspired the title of this blog. We need to be the generation that cares more about our life with Christ, than what is "in." But, that is not my message today. My message today is just a simple one. I was studying my Bible today and read about the crucifixion of Jesus. This just really resonated with my this time while reading it, because of how much my relationship has grown with Him recently. It almost brought me to tears reading it. How they traded him for a criminal, with no reasoning other than His example made them feel bad about how they were living their lives. How they flogged Him and mocked Him, and were just incredibly and inconceivably cruel to Him. And He did it all for us! He endured it all for us!! So that we could be saved! So we could live a life worth living! How could you not just want to do everything you can to please someone who would do that for you? So, if you find yourself questioning, like I have myself before, "Why should I try so hard to live a 'good' Christian life? I know I'm saved." or "I'll do that, even though I know it's wrong, and will just ask for forgiveness afterwards. We are forgiven for our sins right?" The answer is simple: we are saved by His blood and forgiven for all our sins before we even commit them; but, why not do everything we possibly can to please someone who loves us so much? It becomes less of a burden, or task, when we realize how much He sacrificed and how much He loves us, and it becomes more and more of us showing how much we love Him!! Thank you all for reading, and I hope this will inspire you guys to become weird!
Signing off.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
A New Year, Some New Jeer!
Fellow readers,
I hope everyone had a great and safe Christmas and New Years! It's not too late to say that is it? We aren't all the way through January yet. I'm going with yes. But, oh man, how January has flown by already! How have you all been? I had a very wonderful Christmas break filled with lots of family time, friends time, and even some time with my girlfriend. You read that correct ladies, I am now taken-you will have to look elsewhere(I say that as if there are lots of ladies who read this blog just dying to date me....). I kid though, but I am super pumped about it! Um, let's see here...what has happened since we last left off. Well, in my last post, I accidentally left out a shout out to my cousin and his wife. My cousin graduated from his basic training for the Air Force in December and now currently resides in California with his wife, going to school out there for his job in the Air Force. We are all SUPER proud of you Adam! I can't wait until the time arises when we can sit down and have a cigar together again. What else? Well, classes have now started back up. I have three math classes this semester, one being Calculus 3 which is all online. There was no specification that this class would be online. Some of you all might be wondering, "Is that a bad thing?" My answer, yes. Since we are dealing with math here, I will give you an equation which exemplifies why this is a bad thing: lazy student who never does homework + class which is nothing but homework taken for a grade = BAD!! The worst part of it is I have to teach it to myself by reading the textbook. It is going to be a very tough task this semester. Some better news: I started a Bible study in my dorm with my RA and neighbor. The inauguration of said Bible study was thursday night. It consisted of my RA and myself. Yeah, the neighbor bailed for to see a movie playing at one of the campus ministries. We forgave him, however. But, it was good! I am so stoked for what God has in store for us this semester and for everything He is already moving in us!
The Message:
Thursday night, at our previously mentioned Bible study, we went over 1 Corinthians 13-"Love is patient. Love is kind..." Love. Love is a very important subject to talk about. Jesus says we should love everyone as our brother or sister, no matter what they have done or done to us. That is a huge thing! According to that, we must love every person who has ever wronged us, ever come in contact with us. How many of you all struggle with this? I know I struggle with this. I know when I see someone who is doing bad things, or just acting immature or anything like that, my first thought is not, "I love you." That is what is so amazing about God. He loves us no matter what we do. No matter what. That is just awesome to think about. There is nothing you can do to make God say, "That was it man, I just don't love you anymore." Isn't that great? Does this mean you should just do whatever you want and feel right about it, because you know He loves you no matter what? No, it does not. I was reading out of a book yesterday(yes, I was reading. I know that is shocking to some people who know me well), called, Love Out Loud, by Joyce Meyer. It said, "God's plan is so simple...He said to receive and give love, to abide(live, dwell, and remain) in it, and make the pursuit of it your lifetime goal. As we do this God is pleased, we have more joy than we can imagine, and we are a success because we live to help others." As Christians, our main focus is living a life pleasing to God. Well that right there is a good start! He wants us to love everyone. So, what is stopping us? That is a question I will be trying to answer this whole semester in our Bible study. I think everyone should stop and think about that for a second. Thanks for reading
Signing off
I hope everyone had a great and safe Christmas and New Years! It's not too late to say that is it? We aren't all the way through January yet. I'm going with yes. But, oh man, how January has flown by already! How have you all been? I had a very wonderful Christmas break filled with lots of family time, friends time, and even some time with my girlfriend. You read that correct ladies, I am now taken-you will have to look elsewhere(I say that as if there are lots of ladies who read this blog just dying to date me....). I kid though, but I am super pumped about it! Um, let's see here...what has happened since we last left off. Well, in my last post, I accidentally left out a shout out to my cousin and his wife. My cousin graduated from his basic training for the Air Force in December and now currently resides in California with his wife, going to school out there for his job in the Air Force. We are all SUPER proud of you Adam! I can't wait until the time arises when we can sit down and have a cigar together again. What else? Well, classes have now started back up. I have three math classes this semester, one being Calculus 3 which is all online. There was no specification that this class would be online. Some of you all might be wondering, "Is that a bad thing?" My answer, yes. Since we are dealing with math here, I will give you an equation which exemplifies why this is a bad thing: lazy student who never does homework + class which is nothing but homework taken for a grade = BAD!! The worst part of it is I have to teach it to myself by reading the textbook. It is going to be a very tough task this semester. Some better news: I started a Bible study in my dorm with my RA and neighbor. The inauguration of said Bible study was thursday night. It consisted of my RA and myself. Yeah, the neighbor bailed for to see a movie playing at one of the campus ministries. We forgave him, however. But, it was good! I am so stoked for what God has in store for us this semester and for everything He is already moving in us!
The Message:
Thursday night, at our previously mentioned Bible study, we went over 1 Corinthians 13-"Love is patient. Love is kind..." Love. Love is a very important subject to talk about. Jesus says we should love everyone as our brother or sister, no matter what they have done or done to us. That is a huge thing! According to that, we must love every person who has ever wronged us, ever come in contact with us. How many of you all struggle with this? I know I struggle with this. I know when I see someone who is doing bad things, or just acting immature or anything like that, my first thought is not, "I love you." That is what is so amazing about God. He loves us no matter what we do. No matter what. That is just awesome to think about. There is nothing you can do to make God say, "That was it man, I just don't love you anymore." Isn't that great? Does this mean you should just do whatever you want and feel right about it, because you know He loves you no matter what? No, it does not. I was reading out of a book yesterday(yes, I was reading. I know that is shocking to some people who know me well), called, Love Out Loud, by Joyce Meyer. It said, "God's plan is so simple...He said to receive and give love, to abide(live, dwell, and remain) in it, and make the pursuit of it your lifetime goal. As we do this God is pleased, we have more joy than we can imagine, and we are a success because we live to help others." As Christians, our main focus is living a life pleasing to God. Well that right there is a good start! He wants us to love everyone. So, what is stopping us? That is a question I will be trying to answer this whole semester in our Bible study. I think everyone should stop and think about that for a second. Thanks for reading
Signing off
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Christmas Time of Year, Brings All Sorts of Strange Cheer
Fellow Readers,
Oh, how it has been quite a while...I am sorry for such a delay. To tell you what has happened since my last post on here would just take days to read. So, I will not tell you anything that has happened... Okay, that would not be fair to all of you who have eagerly been fastened to the edge of your seats. I promise, I will do my very best to sum up, without lolling, what I have experienced in the last month and one half. I last left you at my grandmother leaving for Oregon until the new year. Well, she still is gone. Nothing has changed there. We miss her though! Not a very good start, I know, but lets get out the most un-interesting stuff out first. Another not-so-interesting thing would be my phone broke on the last week of school. The cool thing, though, is that my brother is getting a new phone; so, he graciously gave me his phone which-he likes to remind me-is valued at $400 still. It is in great shape and is pretty much what I would have got in May when I get an upgrade. So, it opens up my birthday present options for me. All-in-all, not a bad deal for me. In other news, the school year finally ended and I am currently enjoying a long awaited month off-not to rub it in to any of you fellow high school students/workers who only get 13 days off.
Exciting Stuff Since Last Entry:
After Thanksgiving, I bought myself a TV for my dorm. Needless to say, studying was definitely put off 'til the last possible moments after that. My roommate was extremely happy for this as well. When I walked in with the TV, his face mimicked that of a little child on Christmas morning. In fact, I recall mentioning something along the lines of, "Christmas came early Michael." Speaking of Christmas, I got a gift from one of my friends that made top five gifts of all times! It was a package of GIANT Reece's Cups! They were the biggest Reece's cups I have ever seen, each weighing a 1/2 of a pound. Words cannot describe how I felt about those. Other exciting things include: ....well not too much exciting stuff has happened since then. It has been a long month or so filled with constant stuff going on at school. I came out with my head above the water and not dropping my GPA too much, thankfully. OH! Something exciting that has happened: my siblings and some friends had a Mustachio Bachio With a Snazzio Touch, Christmas party last Friday night. A mustachio what?? Some of you might be wondering. Well, it was a Christmas party; but, rather than wearing the ever-so-popular ugly Christmas sweater(a craze that's sweeping the nation), we all dressed up in our fanciest of attire, and drank from wine and brandy glasses custom-made by our sister Ashlee(no alcohol was consumed or even near this party). The catch, however, was that everyone either had to grow a mustache, or wear a fake one. Pictures of this amazing party can be found on my facebook page. If you need a link to that, leave a comment following this post. It was a great, great night.
Okay, now the Message:
This may sound like the very standard, maybe boring, message that you always hear, but especially this time of year I feel like we need to really understand this. Every day is a gift from God. Every time something happens that renders a reaction from you resembling, "I can't believe this. This is amazing!!" or just anything awesome that happens; that is a gift from God. Even when you don't think it is something good, God will always take care of you. Every day is truly a blessing. But, are we giving thanks every day? I like to give thanks when I wake up in the morning by saying a quick prayer thanking Him for the day and just asking for everyone to stay safe in their travels and endeavors that day. And I also like to say thanks in my nightly prayer. I feel like staying safe through the day is something to be thankful for. This time of year, most people are expecting to wake up on Christmas day to open gifts, and that's awesome! I am not excluding myself from that. I can't wait 'til Sunday! (wow, so close!) But, what if we treated every day like Christmas? I mean, Christmas is a time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, right? Why limit it to Christmas day? We should celebrate the life of Jesus that is in our hearts, every day! All-in-all, let's not forget that every day is a blessing, and truly appreciate every opportunity we are given, and enjoy the time we get to spend with family. Merry Christmas yall!! Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
Oh, how it has been quite a while...I am sorry for such a delay. To tell you what has happened since my last post on here would just take days to read. So, I will not tell you anything that has happened... Okay, that would not be fair to all of you who have eagerly been fastened to the edge of your seats. I promise, I will do my very best to sum up, without lolling, what I have experienced in the last month and one half. I last left you at my grandmother leaving for Oregon until the new year. Well, she still is gone. Nothing has changed there. We miss her though! Not a very good start, I know, but lets get out the most un-interesting stuff out first. Another not-so-interesting thing would be my phone broke on the last week of school. The cool thing, though, is that my brother is getting a new phone; so, he graciously gave me his phone which-he likes to remind me-is valued at $400 still. It is in great shape and is pretty much what I would have got in May when I get an upgrade. So, it opens up my birthday present options for me. All-in-all, not a bad deal for me. In other news, the school year finally ended and I am currently enjoying a long awaited month off-not to rub it in to any of you fellow high school students/workers who only get 13 days off.
Exciting Stuff Since Last Entry:
After Thanksgiving, I bought myself a TV for my dorm. Needless to say, studying was definitely put off 'til the last possible moments after that. My roommate was extremely happy for this as well. When I walked in with the TV, his face mimicked that of a little child on Christmas morning. In fact, I recall mentioning something along the lines of, "Christmas came early Michael." Speaking of Christmas, I got a gift from one of my friends that made top five gifts of all times! It was a package of GIANT Reece's Cups! They were the biggest Reece's cups I have ever seen, each weighing a 1/2 of a pound. Words cannot describe how I felt about those. Other exciting things include: ....well not too much exciting stuff has happened since then. It has been a long month or so filled with constant stuff going on at school. I came out with my head above the water and not dropping my GPA too much, thankfully. OH! Something exciting that has happened: my siblings and some friends had a Mustachio Bachio With a Snazzio Touch, Christmas party last Friday night. A mustachio what?? Some of you might be wondering. Well, it was a Christmas party; but, rather than wearing the ever-so-popular ugly Christmas sweater(a craze that's sweeping the nation), we all dressed up in our fanciest of attire, and drank from wine and brandy glasses custom-made by our sister Ashlee(no alcohol was consumed or even near this party). The catch, however, was that everyone either had to grow a mustache, or wear a fake one. Pictures of this amazing party can be found on my facebook page. If you need a link to that, leave a comment following this post. It was a great, great night.
Okay, now the Message:
This may sound like the very standard, maybe boring, message that you always hear, but especially this time of year I feel like we need to really understand this. Every day is a gift from God. Every time something happens that renders a reaction from you resembling, "I can't believe this. This is amazing!!" or just anything awesome that happens; that is a gift from God. Even when you don't think it is something good, God will always take care of you. Every day is truly a blessing. But, are we giving thanks every day? I like to give thanks when I wake up in the morning by saying a quick prayer thanking Him for the day and just asking for everyone to stay safe in their travels and endeavors that day. And I also like to say thanks in my nightly prayer. I feel like staying safe through the day is something to be thankful for. This time of year, most people are expecting to wake up on Christmas day to open gifts, and that's awesome! I am not excluding myself from that. I can't wait 'til Sunday! (wow, so close!) But, what if we treated every day like Christmas? I mean, Christmas is a time when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, right? Why limit it to Christmas day? We should celebrate the life of Jesus that is in our hearts, every day! All-in-all, let's not forget that every day is a blessing, and truly appreciate every opportunity we are given, and enjoy the time we get to spend with family. Merry Christmas yall!! Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Sin WILL Not Weigh Me Down...But Halloween Candy Just Might!
Fellow Readers,
Hey there. How are ya'll doin'? I hope all is well. Halloween has come and gone, and now, onto Christmas! Wait, we are forgetting Thanksgiving! It seems that all stores, and a lot of people I know, are thinking about is Christmas. I work at Kirkland's and we literally had our Thanksgiving decorations on sale for 75% off the day of Halloween. Just sad, however, this meant that all the Halloween candy was on sale! You better believe I went out and snagged me some Reece's! Anyways, so tonight was the big "Family and Friends Day" at Kirkland's. This is a fun little debacle that Kirkland's puts on every year around this time as a "sneak peek" of their Christmas decor. The big kicker is it is technically invite only, and that invite gets you 25% off your entire purchase. The whole night-7:00-9:00 PM- there are door prizes and giveaways and all sorts of shenanigans and what nots. Well, my parents, and Ashlee and my grandma, decided-after I asked and suckered them into coming up here-to drive on up to Cookeville(I say up when referring to any place other than Hendersonville, even though Cookeville is directly east of the ole H-Vegas) and see the rest of the crew that go to school up here. It turned out to be a really fun little shebang, actually. This was the last time we, as in my brother and sis that go here with me, get to see the old broad before she leaves us for the holidays-all three of them(Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years)-to go out to Oregon to spend time with our family up there. Some of you may be a little shocked that I would call my grandmother an old broad, but that's the kind of relationship our family has; we make fun of her, she dishes it back out, we are just really close and call each other names and that sort of stuff and I am truly thankful to be so close with all of them. God has truly blessed me with a family that I get to call my best friends and hang out with them a ton and actually thoroughly enjoy hanging out with them. Anywho, back to the elderly lady. This will now be the second time ever that she has left us for the holidays(first being the year before last) and we are truly going to miss her. So she mustered up the energy to drag her butt up here to C-town and say goodbye to her grandchildren, and she surely didn't just pass on that nice little discount she was getting while she was here. My family managed to win three door prizes and Brittnee also managed to be the closest to guessing how many peppermints were in this gumball machine, so she got to take home that sweet lil' gem as well.
The Message:
With this blog, I have been covering sin mostly. When preaching-for lack of a better word-about sin, I can't just speak of it from the outside, or just from the Bible, I must speak from my own personal battles and experiences with sin. I can't just write scripture in this blog and what I think about it with no real life accounts, using the blog as pedestal or something of that nature. I am not without sin. No one is. If we say we are, we are lying. We repent our sins and are forgiven through Jesus Christ, who died to take on our sin. So, here we go. Of recently, I have been in a funk; well, more of a roller-coaster actually. The roller-coaster's name, Righteousness. It seems like I am just fluctuating between leading a good, Christian life and falling into the grasps of sin. I will feel good, reading my Bible, praying, talking with God, loving, really just livin' right, how we are supposed to. I would feel like people could meet me and just know there is something about me, that something being God. But, I've been building myself up on a faulty foundation. Have I been reading my Bible? Yes. But, have I really read it for growth and learning and understanding, or have I just read it to, well, just read it? The answer, sadly, leans towards the latter. I want to read it for all those things, but sometimes I find myself just trying to "get it done," cause that's what you're supposed to do right? Read your Bible everyday? Well, no actually. That is where I've been getting it wrong. You're not supposed to read it everyday; no, you are supposed to STUDY it everyday. Study. So many times-and I say this from me, but also from people who have told me this as well-we find ourselves thinking the first one, reading it. A lot of times, when I am reading out of it(not studying it) it is so easy to get distracted. Not like flat out distracted where I just stop reading it, but it can be as simple as starting to think of something while reading it, continuing to read, but not focus on the word I am reading. I am reading it with a sense of, "Hey, I have to read this chapter for the day, or however much I decided I was going to read, and then I am done." Well there is so many things wrong with that train of thought. First of all, we have the before-mentioned reading not studying mess going on. Secondly, it is almost as if it is a big ordeal to have to read, that I would be counting down the time 'til I am through reading it. Tres-ly(for those Spanish speakers out there), is it really that good to have a preset cap on how much you're going to read? It doesn't sound that good. When I do all this stuff, like I stated earlier, I am building myself on a faulty foundation. That faulty foundation begins to crack, and then the devil seeps into those cracks and starts to spread them 'til it finally breaks all the way. That is what the devil is doing 24/7. He is constantly trying to squeeze himself into any crack possible, anything to tempt us and try to break us. He is crafty, sneaky, venomous, and so many other things. He will put thing after thing in front of you, temptation after temptation. Eventually, if we have built ourselves up on a faulty foundation, he will succeed, and we will crack and fall into sin. I am not removed from this. My weakness, lust. Is this personal? Maybe so, but testimonies aren't just colored pretty and full of goodness all the time. The devil will bring back things from my past; dark times in my life where he previously won, such things as porn, and heavy lusting on every attractive girl I see, things done with a girl or whatever it may be. Why not? He knows I am weak there. I will pray about it and fight it off, but eventually, because I didn't really study what I read, I will break. I give into temptation. Then I am left in defeat. I just went down the big drop in the roller-coaster. I'm left there, wondering why? Why did I let him win? Why was I not strong enough. Well there is the reason why. I am not strong enough, not by myself. I find my strength in the Lord. With him, I am strong enough to defeat blow after blow from the devil. The problem lies when I don't lean on the Lord. When I don't start asking for the strength to overcome the temptation shoved in my face. So my message to you all is: Call on the Lord in everything you do. Call on Him when you are about to do something you've never done before. Call on Him when you are about to take a test, just ask for recollection of what you already have learned. Call on Him to just be with you. Call on Him for guidance. Call on Him for strength. Just call on Him. If we are constantly talking to God, the devil can't whisper in our ear like the snake he is. And if we STUDY our Bible, we will remember what we have read, learned, and we will recall it when the situation arises and we will conquer anything thrown our way. We cannot make it without Him. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."-Phillipians 4:13.
Thanks for reading.
Signing Off.
Hey there. How are ya'll doin'? I hope all is well. Halloween has come and gone, and now, onto Christmas! Wait, we are forgetting Thanksgiving! It seems that all stores, and a lot of people I know, are thinking about is Christmas. I work at Kirkland's and we literally had our Thanksgiving decorations on sale for 75% off the day of Halloween. Just sad, however, this meant that all the Halloween candy was on sale! You better believe I went out and snagged me some Reece's! Anyways, so tonight was the big "Family and Friends Day" at Kirkland's. This is a fun little debacle that Kirkland's puts on every year around this time as a "sneak peek" of their Christmas decor. The big kicker is it is technically invite only, and that invite gets you 25% off your entire purchase. The whole night-7:00-9:00 PM- there are door prizes and giveaways and all sorts of shenanigans and what nots. Well, my parents, and Ashlee and my grandma, decided-after I asked and suckered them into coming up here-to drive on up to Cookeville(I say up when referring to any place other than Hendersonville, even though Cookeville is directly east of the ole H-Vegas) and see the rest of the crew that go to school up here. It turned out to be a really fun little shebang, actually. This was the last time we, as in my brother and sis that go here with me, get to see the old broad before she leaves us for the holidays-all three of them(Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years)-to go out to Oregon to spend time with our family up there. Some of you may be a little shocked that I would call my grandmother an old broad, but that's the kind of relationship our family has; we make fun of her, she dishes it back out, we are just really close and call each other names and that sort of stuff and I am truly thankful to be so close with all of them. God has truly blessed me with a family that I get to call my best friends and hang out with them a ton and actually thoroughly enjoy hanging out with them. Anywho, back to the elderly lady. This will now be the second time ever that she has left us for the holidays(first being the year before last) and we are truly going to miss her. So she mustered up the energy to drag her butt up here to C-town and say goodbye to her grandchildren, and she surely didn't just pass on that nice little discount she was getting while she was here. My family managed to win three door prizes and Brittnee also managed to be the closest to guessing how many peppermints were in this gumball machine, so she got to take home that sweet lil' gem as well.
The Message:
With this blog, I have been covering sin mostly. When preaching-for lack of a better word-about sin, I can't just speak of it from the outside, or just from the Bible, I must speak from my own personal battles and experiences with sin. I can't just write scripture in this blog and what I think about it with no real life accounts, using the blog as pedestal or something of that nature. I am not without sin. No one is. If we say we are, we are lying. We repent our sins and are forgiven through Jesus Christ, who died to take on our sin. So, here we go. Of recently, I have been in a funk; well, more of a roller-coaster actually. The roller-coaster's name, Righteousness. It seems like I am just fluctuating between leading a good, Christian life and falling into the grasps of sin. I will feel good, reading my Bible, praying, talking with God, loving, really just livin' right, how we are supposed to. I would feel like people could meet me and just know there is something about me, that something being God. But, I've been building myself up on a faulty foundation. Have I been reading my Bible? Yes. But, have I really read it for growth and learning and understanding, or have I just read it to, well, just read it? The answer, sadly, leans towards the latter. I want to read it for all those things, but sometimes I find myself just trying to "get it done," cause that's what you're supposed to do right? Read your Bible everyday? Well, no actually. That is where I've been getting it wrong. You're not supposed to read it everyday; no, you are supposed to STUDY it everyday. Study. So many times-and I say this from me, but also from people who have told me this as well-we find ourselves thinking the first one, reading it. A lot of times, when I am reading out of it(not studying it) it is so easy to get distracted. Not like flat out distracted where I just stop reading it, but it can be as simple as starting to think of something while reading it, continuing to read, but not focus on the word I am reading. I am reading it with a sense of, "Hey, I have to read this chapter for the day, or however much I decided I was going to read, and then I am done." Well there is so many things wrong with that train of thought. First of all, we have the before-mentioned reading not studying mess going on. Secondly, it is almost as if it is a big ordeal to have to read, that I would be counting down the time 'til I am through reading it. Tres-ly(for those Spanish speakers out there), is it really that good to have a preset cap on how much you're going to read? It doesn't sound that good. When I do all this stuff, like I stated earlier, I am building myself on a faulty foundation. That faulty foundation begins to crack, and then the devil seeps into those cracks and starts to spread them 'til it finally breaks all the way. That is what the devil is doing 24/7. He is constantly trying to squeeze himself into any crack possible, anything to tempt us and try to break us. He is crafty, sneaky, venomous, and so many other things. He will put thing after thing in front of you, temptation after temptation. Eventually, if we have built ourselves up on a faulty foundation, he will succeed, and we will crack and fall into sin. I am not removed from this. My weakness, lust. Is this personal? Maybe so, but testimonies aren't just colored pretty and full of goodness all the time. The devil will bring back things from my past; dark times in my life where he previously won, such things as porn, and heavy lusting on every attractive girl I see, things done with a girl or whatever it may be. Why not? He knows I am weak there. I will pray about it and fight it off, but eventually, because I didn't really study what I read, I will break. I give into temptation. Then I am left in defeat. I just went down the big drop in the roller-coaster. I'm left there, wondering why? Why did I let him win? Why was I not strong enough. Well there is the reason why. I am not strong enough, not by myself. I find my strength in the Lord. With him, I am strong enough to defeat blow after blow from the devil. The problem lies when I don't lean on the Lord. When I don't start asking for the strength to overcome the temptation shoved in my face. So my message to you all is: Call on the Lord in everything you do. Call on Him when you are about to do something you've never done before. Call on Him when you are about to take a test, just ask for recollection of what you already have learned. Call on Him to just be with you. Call on Him for guidance. Call on Him for strength. Just call on Him. If we are constantly talking to God, the devil can't whisper in our ear like the snake he is. And if we STUDY our Bible, we will remember what we have read, learned, and we will recall it when the situation arises and we will conquer anything thrown our way. We cannot make it without Him. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."-Phillipians 4:13.
Thanks for reading.
Signing Off.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Goodbyes Can Be So Hard, But Welcome-backs Are Always Easy
Fellow Readers,
This past weekend-and also Monday and today-was totally awesome. It was packed all the way through. I got back home with my sis Thursday night and went to my grandma's house with my brother and sisters to just hang out. Yeah, that's right, we like to go hang out at our grandma's house for fun. I can't think of a thing I would rather like to do instead of that. So, that was my Thursday night; Friday night, was spent with my sis, Brittnee. We went gallivanting about Hendersonville-the Streets were closed so what I mean "about Hendersonville," I mean Glennbrook and Walmart. Of course we had to make a Target run, what better place to just go and mess around at? We then delighted in an oh-so-nutritious dinner from Sonic. Afterward, we made our way to Wally World to grab some dessert. We ended up getting little dollar-somethin containers of ice cream and a bag of movie theater popcorn to eat while watching a Redbox. We rented Arthur and were off back home to watch it. We enjoyed the movie and our delicious popcorn and ice creams, respectively, and it turns out that Arthur is actually a really good movie. Saturday, my brother and sisters and I-and two other friends-went to the Strides Against Breast Cancer five mile walk. It was a lot of fun and there were a TON of people there! It was good to see so much support out there. After the walk, we made our ways to San Antonio Taco Company(SATCO) downtown. We devoured a pretty solid lunch and then my bro and I headed over to my cousins house to just chill with a few stogies. While we were smoking, we decided to start a fire in the little fire pit we were sitting around. Well, every time the wind would blow, it would blow right in Brian's face. No matter where he moved, the smoke would just follow him, it was so funny. We got to kick it there for a while and really have some solid bonding time-it was great. Sunday, my sister and I went to a Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Franklin. Before the "battle" started, Ashlee and I perused around the whole place and I tried on some clothes and hats and then we made our way to where we were going to sit. The battle started really slow, and boring. For 45 minutes of constant, close-range shooting, maybe one guy died. Everyone around us, and ourselves included, all were sayin the same thing: 1500 shots and only one dead?? Then, it finally picked up and people started dying all over the place. Everyone started to enjoy it by then. After it ended, we made it back to my car. The journey begins... It took us an hour and a half to get out of the parking lot! And that was with people conducting it! It was so frustrating and annoying and it made us late to our party. That was our next activity, the family's murder mystery party as a going away party for our cousin Adam, who left for the Air Force today-please keep him in your prayers. The party was put on by our cousin Alysia(sister of Adam) and her husband Lee. It was a "Murder Among the Mateys" pirate-themed murder mystery party. They had there house decorated so well and everyone's costumes were amazing-we all made our own. It was SO much fun and just a really awesome time to spend with family. You're wondering who the murderer was? Well, it happened to be this guy right here. I played it off pretty well though, because only 2 people picked that it was me out of 16. After that we all said our "goodbyes" to our cousin and wished him well. Later that night, I went bowling and to steak and shake with a couple of friends-always a good time at the new Strike and Spare in Hendersonville. Monday was spent lounging around the house. Not a really packed day, but it did take up most of the day. Finally, today was spent lounging for a while and then watching the Deathly Hallows Part 1 with my bro and sis. That took a big chunk out of the day in its own, and was-and will always be-totally worth it. Can't wait to share that whole series with my kids someday. Then, we made our way back to school, only to come back for the weekend again. So that was my weekend/fall break summed up in a few words and lots of advertising for many companies.
Message:
Today's message is not necessarily one from the Word, but just one I want to share. Coming from a semi-large family of six, family is very important to me, as it should be to all. I could not do anything for the rest of my life, but spend time with my family and be perfectly happy. My brother and sis, Brittnee, both go to Tech with me, and Ashlee will be joining us next fall. So naturally, we spend a lot of time together on campus and have mostly the same friends. Well, when we are hanging out with them or tell them we were hanging out with each other, I always get, "Ya'll are so close. I wish my brother/sister and I were as close as you guys." My response to that is simply, puzzled. I don't know how not to be close with them. They are my brother and sister, I've only lived with them my whole life. And it hits me, that a lot of people really aren't as close with their siblings and families as we are with ours. This is not good people! There should be no reason why you shouldn't spend a ton of time with your family if you still live in the same state as them, let alone the same house as them. I am truly blessed to have a family I absolutely love to hang out with and have fun spending time with them. Anyways, I just feel like if you are not close with your siblings, try to spend a little more time with them. I am so thankful for my family and am so proud of my cousin and wish him the best. Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
This past weekend-and also Monday and today-was totally awesome. It was packed all the way through. I got back home with my sis Thursday night and went to my grandma's house with my brother and sisters to just hang out. Yeah, that's right, we like to go hang out at our grandma's house for fun. I can't think of a thing I would rather like to do instead of that. So, that was my Thursday night; Friday night, was spent with my sis, Brittnee. We went gallivanting about Hendersonville-the Streets were closed so what I mean "about Hendersonville," I mean Glennbrook and Walmart. Of course we had to make a Target run, what better place to just go and mess around at? We then delighted in an oh-so-nutritious dinner from Sonic. Afterward, we made our way to Wally World to grab some dessert. We ended up getting little dollar-somethin containers of ice cream and a bag of movie theater popcorn to eat while watching a Redbox. We rented Arthur and were off back home to watch it. We enjoyed the movie and our delicious popcorn and ice creams, respectively, and it turns out that Arthur is actually a really good movie. Saturday, my brother and sisters and I-and two other friends-went to the Strides Against Breast Cancer five mile walk. It was a lot of fun and there were a TON of people there! It was good to see so much support out there. After the walk, we made our ways to San Antonio Taco Company(SATCO) downtown. We devoured a pretty solid lunch and then my bro and I headed over to my cousins house to just chill with a few stogies. While we were smoking, we decided to start a fire in the little fire pit we were sitting around. Well, every time the wind would blow, it would blow right in Brian's face. No matter where he moved, the smoke would just follow him, it was so funny. We got to kick it there for a while and really have some solid bonding time-it was great. Sunday, my sister and I went to a Civil War reenactment of the Battle of Franklin. Before the "battle" started, Ashlee and I perused around the whole place and I tried on some clothes and hats and then we made our way to where we were going to sit. The battle started really slow, and boring. For 45 minutes of constant, close-range shooting, maybe one guy died. Everyone around us, and ourselves included, all were sayin the same thing: 1500 shots and only one dead?? Then, it finally picked up and people started dying all over the place. Everyone started to enjoy it by then. After it ended, we made it back to my car. The journey begins... It took us an hour and a half to get out of the parking lot! And that was with people conducting it! It was so frustrating and annoying and it made us late to our party. That was our next activity, the family's murder mystery party as a going away party for our cousin Adam, who left for the Air Force today-please keep him in your prayers. The party was put on by our cousin Alysia(sister of Adam) and her husband Lee. It was a "Murder Among the Mateys" pirate-themed murder mystery party. They had there house decorated so well and everyone's costumes were amazing-we all made our own. It was SO much fun and just a really awesome time to spend with family. You're wondering who the murderer was? Well, it happened to be this guy right here. I played it off pretty well though, because only 2 people picked that it was me out of 16. After that we all said our "goodbyes" to our cousin and wished him well. Later that night, I went bowling and to steak and shake with a couple of friends-always a good time at the new Strike and Spare in Hendersonville. Monday was spent lounging around the house. Not a really packed day, but it did take up most of the day. Finally, today was spent lounging for a while and then watching the Deathly Hallows Part 1 with my bro and sis. That took a big chunk out of the day in its own, and was-and will always be-totally worth it. Can't wait to share that whole series with my kids someday. Then, we made our way back to school, only to come back for the weekend again. So that was my weekend/fall break summed up in a few words and lots of advertising for many companies.
Message:
Today's message is not necessarily one from the Word, but just one I want to share. Coming from a semi-large family of six, family is very important to me, as it should be to all. I could not do anything for the rest of my life, but spend time with my family and be perfectly happy. My brother and sis, Brittnee, both go to Tech with me, and Ashlee will be joining us next fall. So naturally, we spend a lot of time together on campus and have mostly the same friends. Well, when we are hanging out with them or tell them we were hanging out with each other, I always get, "Ya'll are so close. I wish my brother/sister and I were as close as you guys." My response to that is simply, puzzled. I don't know how not to be close with them. They are my brother and sister, I've only lived with them my whole life. And it hits me, that a lot of people really aren't as close with their siblings and families as we are with ours. This is not good people! There should be no reason why you shouldn't spend a ton of time with your family if you still live in the same state as them, let alone the same house as them. I am truly blessed to have a family I absolutely love to hang out with and have fun spending time with them. Anyways, I just feel like if you are not close with your siblings, try to spend a little more time with them. I am so thankful for my family and am so proud of my cousin and wish him the best. Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Hello There, My Friends.
Fellow Readers,
It has been TOO long. How have you all been? I hope everyone is doing good. I have been doing good, thank you for asking. So, you all are wondering: What have you been up to Andrew? I am so glad you all are so interested in my personal life. The truth is, I have been really busy as of late. School finally picked up. I had a test in all my classes in a span of a week and a half. How did you do Andrew? Well, I did pretty well on half of them. The other half...not so much. (Here comes some insight from the college student's perspective.) I have never been the one to study for, well pretty much anything ever. I know, ya'll are thinkin: how has he made it so far without ever studying and achieved such success in his schooling career? Good question, I guess you could say that I am what they call a "gifted" student. School has never been hard for me. It's okay, I'm allowed to brag, ITS MY BLOG! Anywho, test time comes around for these other half's and I take the usual course of action-not caring. I start to take my Differential Equations test(Diff EQ-upper level math class) and realize, "Dang, I have not a CLUE what is going on." The same thing ran through my mind while taking my Educational Psychology test. I understand the irony in that, being a potential educator, I should know that stuff. Well, it was a lot of material to cover and me being me, I did not study it. Anyways, I'm not here to ramble, I'm here for insight! So, test scores come back: 47/100 on the Diff EQ test...and a 34/50 on ED-PSY test(after 7 point curve...). Here's the insight: an equation I did learn from Diff EQ- Tough classes + no studying + not caring = college just got real. To those reading who will potentially have more tests, take it from someone who never studies; STUDY! The good that did come out of this, though, is that I will now study for those classes. Also, by the grace of God, my Diff EQ teacher decided to offer a, one-time only, re-test and I studied HARDCORE for that one and am awaiting my improved grade. Don't bank on this happening that often. Get a good grade the first time. So, what else has happened since our last convening...well, we got to celebrate another year of the world's GREATEST mom, and a person I am so proud to call madre. I will not mention the age of which this birthday was being celebrated for she would be very upset if I did-mainly because I always exaggerate it and say she's older to get on her nerves. It was a fantastic evening, and a delicious one at that! Love, love, LOVE our grandmother's pot-roast! Oh so delicious! On top of that, we had some of the world famous Birthday Frosting. No, we did not have that on top of the roast, I used that phrase meaning "in addition to." You have not lived until you have tried this Birthday Frosting-it's a secret recipe. Thanks to @ashlee_robinson for that by the way, she made the cake and frosting. Shout out, woot woot! It was an awesome night and am so blessed to have Gena in my life. Love ya ma! Other than that, nothing too major has gone on, just hangin out with friends and stayin busy. Oh, and "Psych" started back up tonight, so I am super stoked for that! So many great quotes already and so funny, and it's only been one episode!
The message:
Sin is all around us, plain and simple. Tough concept, I know, but seriously; we all know it's there. The problem, then, comes from us just accepting this. We accept that it is there, thus not trying to fight it. We don't fight temptation. We don't avoid lusting as an attractive man/woman walks by. We use provocative and cursive language without hesitation. We do all these things without hesitation. We have to avoid accepting it. We have to break the cycle. If this means we have to completely overhaul our lifestyles-who we hang out with, what we watch, what we listen to, etc- we have to do so. Jesus uses the parable of the sower: He says that when the seed was scattered, some of the seed fell into thorns and grew up and was choked out, and some seed fell in good soil and grew up to yield a crop a hundred times more than sown. Now the Bible then gives the meaning of this parable, but that's not all I take it as. Check this out: think of the seed as your being and you the sower. If you plant yourself in a group of sinners(e.g. thorns) after a while you will be choked out and die. However, if you plant yourself around people who are right with God and live their lives for Him, you will be yielded a hundred times more as when you planted yourself in that group. Make sense? Why make it harder on yourself by hanging out with people who do bad things and things you are trying not to do? I know it's not so easy to just drop your friends, but the Bible says, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off..." a bit drastic, but if you have to, drop your friends. I will probably be talking about sin on here a lot. It's just so relevant to, well, everyone. We all struggle with it, I struggle with it. College is a place filled with it. That is why we must stay in the word, and continue to pray throughout the day, keeping an open conversation going with the big guy upstairs. If we constantly are having our eyes fixed on God, we are closing the holes that sin can sneak in on. Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
It has been TOO long. How have you all been? I hope everyone is doing good. I have been doing good, thank you for asking. So, you all are wondering: What have you been up to Andrew? I am so glad you all are so interested in my personal life. The truth is, I have been really busy as of late. School finally picked up. I had a test in all my classes in a span of a week and a half. How did you do Andrew? Well, I did pretty well on half of them. The other half...not so much. (Here comes some insight from the college student's perspective.) I have never been the one to study for, well pretty much anything ever. I know, ya'll are thinkin: how has he made it so far without ever studying and achieved such success in his schooling career? Good question, I guess you could say that I am what they call a "gifted" student. School has never been hard for me. It's okay, I'm allowed to brag, ITS MY BLOG! Anywho, test time comes around for these other half's and I take the usual course of action-not caring. I start to take my Differential Equations test(Diff EQ-upper level math class) and realize, "Dang, I have not a CLUE what is going on." The same thing ran through my mind while taking my Educational Psychology test. I understand the irony in that, being a potential educator, I should know that stuff. Well, it was a lot of material to cover and me being me, I did not study it. Anyways, I'm not here to ramble, I'm here for insight! So, test scores come back: 47/100 on the Diff EQ test...and a 34/50 on ED-PSY test(after 7 point curve...). Here's the insight: an equation I did learn from Diff EQ- Tough classes + no studying + not caring = college just got real. To those reading who will potentially have more tests, take it from someone who never studies; STUDY! The good that did come out of this, though, is that I will now study for those classes. Also, by the grace of God, my Diff EQ teacher decided to offer a, one-time only, re-test and I studied HARDCORE for that one and am awaiting my improved grade. Don't bank on this happening that often. Get a good grade the first time. So, what else has happened since our last convening...well, we got to celebrate another year of the world's GREATEST mom, and a person I am so proud to call madre. I will not mention the age of which this birthday was being celebrated for she would be very upset if I did-mainly because I always exaggerate it and say she's older to get on her nerves. It was a fantastic evening, and a delicious one at that! Love, love, LOVE our grandmother's pot-roast! Oh so delicious! On top of that, we had some of the world famous Birthday Frosting. No, we did not have that on top of the roast, I used that phrase meaning "in addition to." You have not lived until you have tried this Birthday Frosting-it's a secret recipe. Thanks to @ashlee_robinson for that by the way, she made the cake and frosting. Shout out, woot woot! It was an awesome night and am so blessed to have Gena in my life. Love ya ma! Other than that, nothing too major has gone on, just hangin out with friends and stayin busy. Oh, and "Psych" started back up tonight, so I am super stoked for that! So many great quotes already and so funny, and it's only been one episode!
The message:
Sin is all around us, plain and simple. Tough concept, I know, but seriously; we all know it's there. The problem, then, comes from us just accepting this. We accept that it is there, thus not trying to fight it. We don't fight temptation. We don't avoid lusting as an attractive man/woman walks by. We use provocative and cursive language without hesitation. We do all these things without hesitation. We have to avoid accepting it. We have to break the cycle. If this means we have to completely overhaul our lifestyles-who we hang out with, what we watch, what we listen to, etc- we have to do so. Jesus uses the parable of the sower: He says that when the seed was scattered, some of the seed fell into thorns and grew up and was choked out, and some seed fell in good soil and grew up to yield a crop a hundred times more than sown. Now the Bible then gives the meaning of this parable, but that's not all I take it as. Check this out: think of the seed as your being and you the sower. If you plant yourself in a group of sinners(e.g. thorns) after a while you will be choked out and die. However, if you plant yourself around people who are right with God and live their lives for Him, you will be yielded a hundred times more as when you planted yourself in that group. Make sense? Why make it harder on yourself by hanging out with people who do bad things and things you are trying not to do? I know it's not so easy to just drop your friends, but the Bible says, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off..." a bit drastic, but if you have to, drop your friends. I will probably be talking about sin on here a lot. It's just so relevant to, well, everyone. We all struggle with it, I struggle with it. College is a place filled with it. That is why we must stay in the word, and continue to pray throughout the day, keeping an open conversation going with the big guy upstairs. If we constantly are having our eyes fixed on God, we are closing the holes that sin can sneak in on. Thanks for reading.
Signing off.
Monday, September 19, 2011
"We are just monkeying around!"
Fellow readers,
It has been a while my friends. It is good to be back on here; I missed you all(ironic, being as I do not know exactly who reads this and when they do read it). How have you been Andrew? You might ask. Thank you, I have actually been really great of late. Well, what have you been up to? That is a good question; I have just been hangin' out, you know. Enjoyin' the life of your average college-aged kid I suppose. I've been relishing the presence of friends, still reading the word, and going to classes and work here and there. That's really cool Andrew, did you do anything interesting this past weekend? That is another great question, pal. Yes, in fact I did do something rather fun and quirky this past weekend. It started out as your normal Friday, you could say; just the usual sleeping in, for me, until my 12:20 music appreciation class-only class of the day so not too tough of a day. After music, I indulged in the magnificently, well-prepared caf food. After that rather swanky meal, I moseyed on up to my dorm room and sat down and read some passages for the day. I kind of follow a Bible study plan-when I say "kind of," I really mean I use it for the order of the books to read; I mostly read as much as I can until I start to wonder off you could say. It varies everyday, but at some point in reading whether it be a chapter in or 10 chapters in, whatever it may be, there comes a time when I just cannot focus anymore and that is when I put 'er down. The way I see it, if I am not focused in it, I will get nothing out of it. Anywho, after reading and spending time on the computer or listening to music or playing on my iPad, or any combination of those things, I eventually venture off to dinner with my sister. After another lavishing meal, we...well this part eludes me at the moment, but we eventually end up in the main quad with one of our friends. At this point, we were left to ponder what to do for the night. Then, suddenly, it hits my sister, like a slap to the face with a fish, we should rent bicycles and ride them around campus. Rent bicycles? Yes, you read that correctly. At Tech, new this year, you can now rent bicycles between the hours of 7 AM through midnight. And these aren't just any bicycles, no these are straight up, legit cruisers! If you find yourself wondering what the heck a cruiser is, picture the old fashion, 50's-like bicycles that usually had the basket on the front with the huge, wide handlebars and it is a one-speed. Yeah, we were pumped! So, we go to one of the two dorms that you can rent these awesome machines from, and just to our luck, there were three left-perfect! We head outside to the bike racks with glimmer in our eyes and the whole "kid in the candy store" look on our faces. We get the bikes unlocked(one girl bike and two boys bikes, so my sis had to ride the other guys bike) and are about to hit the road. My bike's rear tire was flat and ripping of of the rim-I rode it anyways. My sister's seat on her's was hardly on and moved all over the place, but still rode pretty well. Our friend's bike had no flaws. We ride over to my car(parked at the dorm where we got the bikes) and got the tire pump out of my sweet road-side emergency kit. #thanksdadforthose. I pump up my tire and all looks well. I ride it for less than a minute and its popping off again. I proceed to chain it back up, and my sister's also, to then head over to the other dorm to see if there are any good ones there. As we walk up, three people are riding off with bikes leaving one girl bike left. So, my sister rents the girl one and they just-so-happened to have a wrench. Back to the other dorm again. I end up fixing the seat on my sister's original bike, and without further ado, we were riding. We rode all over campus and spent a little extra time riding in front of a camera that is connected to TTU's website for all who want to look at, can. Of course we called someone to look for us, ended up not seeing us however. After about an hour of riding, we returned the bikes and hit up the good ole T-Mart. If you are planning on going to Tech, this whole story is good for you, because you get to hear about some totally solid things to do on or around campus. The sole reason probably 85% of people who go to the T-Mart, go there to get the pizza rolls. These suckers are AMAZING. I know you're probably thinking of like Totino's Pizza rolls(TM) that come in your local grocery store's freezer section. No, these babies are like a big pizza slice with amazing crust rolled into a roll bigger than a fist. Like I stated right up there, amazing. After satisfying our hunger with the infamous pizza rolls, we headed back to the quad. We parked, and discussed what to do next. After some deliberations, we headed to the trunk of my car(you never know what you can find in there; I used to have an inflatable bull rider costume in there. Anyways, Brittnee and I knew that there were some baseball mitts in there and were hoping there would be a ball to) only to find no ball. However, I found a box of shoes that were our other sister's and she was giving them away. In this box of shoes, were a sweet pair of light-up shoes in mint condition. No, these were not kids shoes, our sister bought these as an adult. I asked what size shoe our friend wore and they were that exact size! This was perfect for what ended up in store for us afterward, because our friend only had flip-flops on. So, now comes the afterward. We were all hanging out at one of the benches in the quad, which is lined with numerous trees. Right next to the bench where we resided, was a grand, maple tree of some sorts just begging to be climbed. I head over to it and continued to climb on up it. Now, to preface this feat; I did P90X this summer, which vastly improved my abilities to climb this tree. After getting up there my sister and our friend tried to climb as well. They were too short to do so-not a stab in the back on them though, it could happen to anyone. We then, were determined to get them up in a tree. We scoured that whole quad until we found a tree suitable for their heights. Unfortunately, there was not any. This didn't stop them, however, for there were police blockades all around the quad(they are making it pedestrian only, so they have the roads blocked off from cars) perfect for a little step-stool if you will. After grabbing one of the blockades and butting it up against the tree, and also a little help from me, we all got up in the tree. It was a glorious and satisfying moment for us. We hung out in the tree for a little while then headed on. We eventually ended up chilling in another tree, coincidentally in the view of that same camera we rode the bikes in front of. This tree had a few good spots in it that if you lie in them correctly, you could hang out there for hours. After the tree climbing it was about 1:30 AM, thankfully, one of the best donut shops in town is two blocks from campus and is open 24 hours. Success! After having to buy a whole dozen(minimum purchase with a card is $5, got the dozen for 8 bucks-not bad at all) we headed back home for the night, completely satisfied with a very solid, very legit Friday night. The rest of the weekend was spent heading around town to various shops and spending time with the sis and friends and then on Sunday, spent the whole day watching football. Go Titans! It was a very gratifying weekend, to say the least.
Now, onto the message:
Today, I'm gonna talk about love. I know you're thinking, what does he know about love? He's only 19, he has no idea what he is talking about. Am I a master of love, a love doctor if you will? No. Have I ever felt like I was in love with someone? Yes, but things did not work out. I'm not sad about it, nor want a pity party over it, I am just saying, to me, and what I believe love is, I had it. Anyways, love is all around us. All the time people are falling in and out of love, even those we all thought would never fall in love with each other, do. Even those we thought would stay together forever, don't. As humans, love is always changing and is never anything 100% definite 'til we finally find that one. And even then it's still not 100%. But, there is one love that IS definite, and never changing, and that is the love God has for us. God loves us so much that He sent His only son to die for us, so that we would be without sin. I know this sounds like the standard, the classic message that everyone's heard before, but really, we need to keep hearing it. We need to understand His love for us. Because of His love, HE SENT HIS ONLY SON TO DIE FOR US! You cannot find that love with any other person on this Earth. No love can compare. It says in Romans 5, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" The way I interpret that is that even when we sinned, and did not have hearts for God, He sent Jesus to die for us. Even when we didn't love Him, He sent His son to die for us. And now that we do know Him, and do love Him, how much more will He do for us? So what do we do now? How do we demonstrate our love for God? It says later in Romans 13, "The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor." So to show our love for God, we must show love to each other. No matter who they are, if we like them or not, if we know them or not, if they have done something to us or not, regardless, we must love them. On the point of if they have done something to us or not, the scripture right before that says, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another...Do not repay anyone evil for evil...Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord. On the contrary: 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.' Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." I know that was long, but the message is perfect. Even if someone mistreats you in the worst way, you should still love them. You should never hate anyone, the Bible also says, "never hate anyone, if you feel hatred, pray for them..." something along those lines anyways. If we show God's love to them, we are building favor in the Lord and in doing so, He will give those people what they deserve and what only He alone should be able to do to them. It is not our right to do anything to them. So to sum everything up here, love everyone, and tell them about God's love. If we all just love each other, the world would be so much better(I know that's cliche, but it's true!). But don't love everyone just to make the world better, but for His word tells us so. Thanks for readin. Signing off
It has been a while my friends. It is good to be back on here; I missed you all(ironic, being as I do not know exactly who reads this and when they do read it). How have you been Andrew? You might ask. Thank you, I have actually been really great of late. Well, what have you been up to? That is a good question; I have just been hangin' out, you know. Enjoyin' the life of your average college-aged kid I suppose. I've been relishing the presence of friends, still reading the word, and going to classes and work here and there. That's really cool Andrew, did you do anything interesting this past weekend? That is another great question, pal. Yes, in fact I did do something rather fun and quirky this past weekend. It started out as your normal Friday, you could say; just the usual sleeping in, for me, until my 12:20 music appreciation class-only class of the day so not too tough of a day. After music, I indulged in the magnificently, well-prepared caf food. After that rather swanky meal, I moseyed on up to my dorm room and sat down and read some passages for the day. I kind of follow a Bible study plan-when I say "kind of," I really mean I use it for the order of the books to read; I mostly read as much as I can until I start to wonder off you could say. It varies everyday, but at some point in reading whether it be a chapter in or 10 chapters in, whatever it may be, there comes a time when I just cannot focus anymore and that is when I put 'er down. The way I see it, if I am not focused in it, I will get nothing out of it. Anywho, after reading and spending time on the computer or listening to music or playing on my iPad, or any combination of those things, I eventually venture off to dinner with my sister. After another lavishing meal, we...well this part eludes me at the moment, but we eventually end up in the main quad with one of our friends. At this point, we were left to ponder what to do for the night. Then, suddenly, it hits my sister, like a slap to the face with a fish, we should rent bicycles and ride them around campus. Rent bicycles? Yes, you read that correctly. At Tech, new this year, you can now rent bicycles between the hours of 7 AM through midnight. And these aren't just any bicycles, no these are straight up, legit cruisers! If you find yourself wondering what the heck a cruiser is, picture the old fashion, 50's-like bicycles that usually had the basket on the front with the huge, wide handlebars and it is a one-speed. Yeah, we were pumped! So, we go to one of the two dorms that you can rent these awesome machines from, and just to our luck, there were three left-perfect! We head outside to the bike racks with glimmer in our eyes and the whole "kid in the candy store" look on our faces. We get the bikes unlocked(one girl bike and two boys bikes, so my sis had to ride the other guys bike) and are about to hit the road. My bike's rear tire was flat and ripping of of the rim-I rode it anyways. My sister's seat on her's was hardly on and moved all over the place, but still rode pretty well. Our friend's bike had no flaws. We ride over to my car(parked at the dorm where we got the bikes) and got the tire pump out of my sweet road-side emergency kit. #thanksdadforthose. I pump up my tire and all looks well. I ride it for less than a minute and its popping off again. I proceed to chain it back up, and my sister's also, to then head over to the other dorm to see if there are any good ones there. As we walk up, three people are riding off with bikes leaving one girl bike left. So, my sister rents the girl one and they just-so-happened to have a wrench. Back to the other dorm again. I end up fixing the seat on my sister's original bike, and without further ado, we were riding. We rode all over campus and spent a little extra time riding in front of a camera that is connected to TTU's website for all who want to look at, can. Of course we called someone to look for us, ended up not seeing us however. After about an hour of riding, we returned the bikes and hit up the good ole T-Mart. If you are planning on going to Tech, this whole story is good for you, because you get to hear about some totally solid things to do on or around campus. The sole reason probably 85% of people who go to the T-Mart, go there to get the pizza rolls. These suckers are AMAZING. I know you're probably thinking of like Totino's Pizza rolls(TM) that come in your local grocery store's freezer section. No, these babies are like a big pizza slice with amazing crust rolled into a roll bigger than a fist. Like I stated right up there, amazing. After satisfying our hunger with the infamous pizza rolls, we headed back to the quad. We parked, and discussed what to do next. After some deliberations, we headed to the trunk of my car(you never know what you can find in there; I used to have an inflatable bull rider costume in there. Anyways, Brittnee and I knew that there were some baseball mitts in there and were hoping there would be a ball to) only to find no ball. However, I found a box of shoes that were our other sister's and she was giving them away. In this box of shoes, were a sweet pair of light-up shoes in mint condition. No, these were not kids shoes, our sister bought these as an adult. I asked what size shoe our friend wore and they were that exact size! This was perfect for what ended up in store for us afterward, because our friend only had flip-flops on. So, now comes the afterward. We were all hanging out at one of the benches in the quad, which is lined with numerous trees. Right next to the bench where we resided, was a grand, maple tree of some sorts just begging to be climbed. I head over to it and continued to climb on up it. Now, to preface this feat; I did P90X this summer, which vastly improved my abilities to climb this tree. After getting up there my sister and our friend tried to climb as well. They were too short to do so-not a stab in the back on them though, it could happen to anyone. We then, were determined to get them up in a tree. We scoured that whole quad until we found a tree suitable for their heights. Unfortunately, there was not any. This didn't stop them, however, for there were police blockades all around the quad(they are making it pedestrian only, so they have the roads blocked off from cars) perfect for a little step-stool if you will. After grabbing one of the blockades and butting it up against the tree, and also a little help from me, we all got up in the tree. It was a glorious and satisfying moment for us. We hung out in the tree for a little while then headed on. We eventually ended up chilling in another tree, coincidentally in the view of that same camera we rode the bikes in front of. This tree had a few good spots in it that if you lie in them correctly, you could hang out there for hours. After the tree climbing it was about 1:30 AM, thankfully, one of the best donut shops in town is two blocks from campus and is open 24 hours. Success! After having to buy a whole dozen(minimum purchase with a card is $5, got the dozen for 8 bucks-not bad at all) we headed back home for the night, completely satisfied with a very solid, very legit Friday night. The rest of the weekend was spent heading around town to various shops and spending time with the sis and friends and then on Sunday, spent the whole day watching football. Go Titans! It was a very gratifying weekend, to say the least.
Now, onto the message:
Today, I'm gonna talk about love. I know you're thinking, what does he know about love? He's only 19, he has no idea what he is talking about. Am I a master of love, a love doctor if you will? No. Have I ever felt like I was in love with someone? Yes, but things did not work out. I'm not sad about it, nor want a pity party over it, I am just saying, to me, and what I believe love is, I had it. Anyways, love is all around us. All the time people are falling in and out of love, even those we all thought would never fall in love with each other, do. Even those we thought would stay together forever, don't. As humans, love is always changing and is never anything 100% definite 'til we finally find that one. And even then it's still not 100%. But, there is one love that IS definite, and never changing, and that is the love God has for us. God loves us so much that He sent His only son to die for us, so that we would be without sin. I know this sounds like the standard, the classic message that everyone's heard before, but really, we need to keep hearing it. We need to understand His love for us. Because of His love, HE SENT HIS ONLY SON TO DIE FOR US! You cannot find that love with any other person on this Earth. No love can compare. It says in Romans 5, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" The way I interpret that is that even when we sinned, and did not have hearts for God, He sent Jesus to die for us. Even when we didn't love Him, He sent His son to die for us. And now that we do know Him, and do love Him, how much more will He do for us? So what do we do now? How do we demonstrate our love for God? It says later in Romans 13, "The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor." So to show our love for God, we must show love to each other. No matter who they are, if we like them or not, if we know them or not, if they have done something to us or not, regardless, we must love them. On the point of if they have done something to us or not, the scripture right before that says, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another...Do not repay anyone evil for evil...Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord. On the contrary: 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.' Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." I know that was long, but the message is perfect. Even if someone mistreats you in the worst way, you should still love them. You should never hate anyone, the Bible also says, "never hate anyone, if you feel hatred, pray for them..." something along those lines anyways. If we show God's love to them, we are building favor in the Lord and in doing so, He will give those people what they deserve and what only He alone should be able to do to them. It is not our right to do anything to them. So to sum everything up here, love everyone, and tell them about God's love. If we all just love each other, the world would be so much better(I know that's cliche, but it's true!). But don't love everyone just to make the world better, but for His word tells us so. Thanks for readin. Signing off
Sunday, September 4, 2011
"I have a technical degree in broadband networking..."
Fellow Readers,
I hope you all are enjoying your Labor Day Weekends, respectively. Mine has been pretty good so far, but unfortunately has to come to an end early for I have to go to work ON Labor Day in the morning. That's not so bad though, it's only for four hours, however, my current employer is located in Cookeville meaning I have to go back to school like any normal weekend. So much for the holiday. It's okay though, I'm not tryin' to put on any pitty-party or anything resembling such. From the time I last composed, nothing too big has happened. One of the main things that happened was the total awesomeness of Tech's Internet completely falling out for ehhh...about three days. Now, the Internet failing, that's not so much of a big deal I mean the Internet at our house fails every once and a while. But, this was the entire campus' Internet failing and not being fixed for THREE days. That must have been some problem to have the whole IT department working on it "around the clock" for three days. Yeah, that's one of the funny parts: while the Internet is NOT working, Tech decides to tell us they have the whole IT department working "around the clock" on fixing it via e-mail. How ironic is that? Oh yeah, we will all see that e-mail while our Internet is not working. Anywho, it is time for a little vocabulary lesson. Let us look at the name of the fine institution in which I call my scholarly home: Tennessee Technological University. Okay, begin lesson; Tennessee-the state in which this school reside-let's pass on the middle term for just a second and get back to that in the end, University-cooler name for college, well that is my definition for right now because the proper one is too long-now, we can cover the middle term, Technological-of or pertaining to technology. Now, how good does it look that a technological school can't solve a simple Internet problem faster than more than half of our school week, especially working around the clock?! One of these nights without Internet, I was walking back into my dorm to drop of my stuff and I ran into some kid I never had met before and we started talking about the Internet problem. This kid graduated high school in 2008, however, this is his first year of college. In his time after high school, he obtained three technical degrees, one being in broadband networking. I asked him if he could fix our problem for us to which his reply was, "I've tried to go to the IT department to offer my help but when I go up there they are all just sitting around." So much for working around the clock huh? The problem was finally fixed on Friday, just in time to go home and not use it. Since then, I've enjoyed a nice weekend of hanging out with my family and our extended family, the Godseys. Other than that, just the normal weekend.
For the word today, I do not have much. I am still reading and learning and will not necessarily have a word in every post. Stay tuned for the next post!
Thanks for reading. Signing off.
I hope you all are enjoying your Labor Day Weekends, respectively. Mine has been pretty good so far, but unfortunately has to come to an end early for I have to go to work ON Labor Day in the morning. That's not so bad though, it's only for four hours, however, my current employer is located in Cookeville meaning I have to go back to school like any normal weekend. So much for the holiday. It's okay though, I'm not tryin' to put on any pitty-party or anything resembling such. From the time I last composed, nothing too big has happened. One of the main things that happened was the total awesomeness of Tech's Internet completely falling out for ehhh...about three days. Now, the Internet failing, that's not so much of a big deal I mean the Internet at our house fails every once and a while. But, this was the entire campus' Internet failing and not being fixed for THREE days. That must have been some problem to have the whole IT department working on it "around the clock" for three days. Yeah, that's one of the funny parts: while the Internet is NOT working, Tech decides to tell us they have the whole IT department working "around the clock" on fixing it via e-mail. How ironic is that? Oh yeah, we will all see that e-mail while our Internet is not working. Anywho, it is time for a little vocabulary lesson. Let us look at the name of the fine institution in which I call my scholarly home: Tennessee Technological University. Okay, begin lesson; Tennessee-the state in which this school reside-let's pass on the middle term for just a second and get back to that in the end, University-cooler name for college, well that is my definition for right now because the proper one is too long-now, we can cover the middle term, Technological-of or pertaining to technology. Now, how good does it look that a technological school can't solve a simple Internet problem faster than more than half of our school week, especially working around the clock?! One of these nights without Internet, I was walking back into my dorm to drop of my stuff and I ran into some kid I never had met before and we started talking about the Internet problem. This kid graduated high school in 2008, however, this is his first year of college. In his time after high school, he obtained three technical degrees, one being in broadband networking. I asked him if he could fix our problem for us to which his reply was, "I've tried to go to the IT department to offer my help but when I go up there they are all just sitting around." So much for working around the clock huh? The problem was finally fixed on Friday, just in time to go home and not use it. Since then, I've enjoyed a nice weekend of hanging out with my family and our extended family, the Godseys. Other than that, just the normal weekend.
For the word today, I do not have much. I am still reading and learning and will not necessarily have a word in every post. Stay tuned for the next post!
Thanks for reading. Signing off.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Early Bird Gets the Worm
Fellow readers,
Today was my first day working up here in Cookeville, and I had to be at the store by nine. Well, like any normal human being would do, I set the good ole' cuckoo clock for about 8:14 or so. Did I mention in my first post about my roommate making noise early in the morning? It is very sad to say, but I spoke too soon. I don't even know why I am even distraught by this point about this, because it is like clockwork everyday since we moved in on Friday. When 7:15 rolls around, I am awoken to any kind of noise that can be made in a dorm room without using your mouth. So, today, at 7:15-a whole hour before the earliest I wanted to get up at-there was a nice, wholesome, smacking of a knee into a desk. Did this wake me up? You bet your bottom dollar it did. This was followed by a murmur of some sort that I was too haggard to care to figure out. Nevertheless, I was able to fall back into a nice slumber. For the next, ehhh...hour or so(maybe more, well probably more), my roommate left the room-to later re-enter-about five or six times. This would have been fine, but I am not too sure this kiddo understands exiting and entering quietly. He goes full guns a blazin' in and out locking the door behind him each and every time. You're probably wondering, why did we need to know that he locks the door every time he leaves when Andrew is still in there. Well for one, I think that is a little weird(insert a chuckle). I mean, it is not like I am going to just let someone walk in and steal all his stuff. But the main reason I mention such a tedious little thing is for the fact that when you lock the door, it makes a good bank vault sounding lockage. So, every time he would leave, I would wake up to the lock. Every time he would come back, I got to have a nice two-for-one special(unlocking is just as loud, if not louder). Now, I know what you all are thinking: "Man Andrew sure likes to use parenthesis and likes to think he can read minds." But, I like to be very descriptive in my writing so you all can get the full experience. Furthermore, I will not be complaining about my roommate in every single post. I just like to get the ball rolling here with a nice anecdotal experience to lighten the mood, you could say. The rest of my day today went like how a usual Tuesday should go for me this semester: I wake up, go to work as long as I can before I go to class; after my first class, grab some lunch around three then chill 'til my 4:30 class with my sis; get out of class and go eat dinner with the clan and friends; chill after dinner and hang out; and end the day with a nice run/workout at the fit with my broseph. This is also a nice mirror-image of my R-day as well. At some point in these days I will read my Bible and also pray throughout the day about anything that comes to mind. I like to think(and this also stems from a teaching from my youth pastor The Huff, shout-out also to exitseven youth group) that if you pray continuously throughout the day, you will be keeping a nice little convo with man upstairs. And as any nice dialogue goes, both parties will participate. What do I mean by this? Well, if you are keeping a good buzz session going with the Lord, you will find that He will speak to you as well. You will start to hear Him more and start to hear His directions He has for you. If you don't know what you want to do with your life right now(assuming you are college age) don't worry. Rather, start to pray about guidance and direction and just keep an open confabulation with God and just pray about anything you think of throughout the day that you want to pray about; and soon, you will begin to uncover the path He has set out for you. Coming into the final month of my summer between senior year of high school and first year of college, I had no definite decision on what I wanted to do with my life. I hadn't even decided on what college yet. I had some choices out there that I had thought of, but I never really had a plan, nor had I really felt strong enough about any of them to make a decision on it. To this point, I had prayed here and there about it, but never really consistently or full-heartedly. Once I finally began to say that I really needed to pray for this and just really seeked His guidance, I finally had a dream one night. Now, I'm not saying that He will always come to you in a dream or anything like that, but for me He did. I had this dream and long story short, I was here at Tech, ministering to people and i was wanting to be a high school principal. That next day, I enrolled at Tech and got accepted. But His voice didn't stop there: I began to just think of things about when I was a principal and started to really have a plan for myself. These thoughts came to me whenever, I had one while I was in the shower one day. He will talk to you whenever as long as you are talking with Him.
Thanks. Signing off.
Today was my first day working up here in Cookeville, and I had to be at the store by nine. Well, like any normal human being would do, I set the good ole' cuckoo clock for about 8:14 or so. Did I mention in my first post about my roommate making noise early in the morning? It is very sad to say, but I spoke too soon. I don't even know why I am even distraught by this point about this, because it is like clockwork everyday since we moved in on Friday. When 7:15 rolls around, I am awoken to any kind of noise that can be made in a dorm room without using your mouth. So, today, at 7:15-a whole hour before the earliest I wanted to get up at-there was a nice, wholesome, smacking of a knee into a desk. Did this wake me up? You bet your bottom dollar it did. This was followed by a murmur of some sort that I was too haggard to care to figure out. Nevertheless, I was able to fall back into a nice slumber. For the next, ehhh...hour or so(maybe more, well probably more), my roommate left the room-to later re-enter-about five or six times. This would have been fine, but I am not too sure this kiddo understands exiting and entering quietly. He goes full guns a blazin' in and out locking the door behind him each and every time. You're probably wondering, why did we need to know that he locks the door every time he leaves when Andrew is still in there. Well for one, I think that is a little weird(insert a chuckle). I mean, it is not like I am going to just let someone walk in and steal all his stuff. But the main reason I mention such a tedious little thing is for the fact that when you lock the door, it makes a good bank vault sounding lockage. So, every time he would leave, I would wake up to the lock. Every time he would come back, I got to have a nice two-for-one special(unlocking is just as loud, if not louder). Now, I know what you all are thinking: "Man Andrew sure likes to use parenthesis and likes to think he can read minds." But, I like to be very descriptive in my writing so you all can get the full experience. Furthermore, I will not be complaining about my roommate in every single post. I just like to get the ball rolling here with a nice anecdotal experience to lighten the mood, you could say. The rest of my day today went like how a usual Tuesday should go for me this semester: I wake up, go to work as long as I can before I go to class; after my first class, grab some lunch around three then chill 'til my 4:30 class with my sis; get out of class and go eat dinner with the clan and friends; chill after dinner and hang out; and end the day with a nice run/workout at the fit with my broseph. This is also a nice mirror-image of my R-day as well. At some point in these days I will read my Bible and also pray throughout the day about anything that comes to mind. I like to think(and this also stems from a teaching from my youth pastor The Huff, shout-out also to exitseven youth group) that if you pray continuously throughout the day, you will be keeping a nice little convo with man upstairs. And as any nice dialogue goes, both parties will participate. What do I mean by this? Well, if you are keeping a good buzz session going with the Lord, you will find that He will speak to you as well. You will start to hear Him more and start to hear His directions He has for you. If you don't know what you want to do with your life right now(assuming you are college age) don't worry. Rather, start to pray about guidance and direction and just keep an open confabulation with God and just pray about anything you think of throughout the day that you want to pray about; and soon, you will begin to uncover the path He has set out for you. Coming into the final month of my summer between senior year of high school and first year of college, I had no definite decision on what I wanted to do with my life. I hadn't even decided on what college yet. I had some choices out there that I had thought of, but I never really had a plan, nor had I really felt strong enough about any of them to make a decision on it. To this point, I had prayed here and there about it, but never really consistently or full-heartedly. Once I finally began to say that I really needed to pray for this and just really seeked His guidance, I finally had a dream one night. Now, I'm not saying that He will always come to you in a dream or anything like that, but for me He did. I had this dream and long story short, I was here at Tech, ministering to people and i was wanting to be a high school principal. That next day, I enrolled at Tech and got accepted. But His voice didn't stop there: I began to just think of things about when I was a principal and started to really have a plan for myself. These thoughts came to me whenever, I had one while I was in the shower one day. He will talk to you whenever as long as you are talking with Him.
Thanks. Signing off.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Day Uno
First blog ever...here it goes.
Today started out to the sound of my new roommate, to whom I know nothing about at all(#notmuchofatalker), rummaging through bags and the stuffing of closed-cell extruded polystryrene foam(a.k.a styrofoam) from his new printer back into its packaging. This went on for some time until he finally got it to fit in the box-only to lead to him setting up his new printer and hearing it go through an obscene amount of diagnostics tests to ensure of its capability to perform the day-to-day operations of the standard printer. A pretty snazzy new alarm eh? Well it worked, except for it going off three hours before I needed it to. So, I finally get out of bed-when I planned on-and checked my email just to see who is offering me what. Then, something detrimentally fantastic happened. An email from the professor of my only class on Mondays-more specifically, today being the first Monday, the first day of school-appeared in my inbox. Lone behold was it there none other than to tell me that my only class for today has been canceled. The detrimental part unfortunately is for her and her family for her son is very sick and was in the ER so please, everyone, PRAY for her and her family. Anyways, so there was no class for me today so I gleefully closed the lid to my laptop and jumped in the shower(roommate is still in room). After the daily hygiene routine, I come back to a locked dorm room. It is great to have a roommate who locks up so our stuff is not stolen, unfortunately he did not think about me not taking my key with me to the showers. Long story shortened, I end up in the main lobby of the dorm in my boxers only to find my roommate sitting there watching TV. #awesomemorning.
Moving on to the Word:
I later opened my Bible to read some passages for the day. I am currently in Romans and I read a passage from Romans 4. By this point in Romans, it is discussing righteousness and unrighteousness and the Law. It mentions throughout Romans 2:17-29 about knowing the Law and teaching it to others but sort of being a hypocrite, you could say. Romans 2:21"you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?" The next couple of verses go through other contradictions. What I take from what this is saying is that a lot of times, we-as Christians-often times focus on sharing God's words with everyone else, that we forget to share it with ourselves. Are we any better than those who we are trying to minister to if we don't even follow what we are teaching? From a college student's perspective, college is a tough environment to try to minister to people. Heck, it's a really tough environment considering all of the things going on: clubs, partying, drinking, sex, the list goes on. With all that going on you tend to think, or at least I do, they're not going to want to listen to someone trying to tell them about living for God when they know a lot of the stuff they are doing is wrong. But besides ministering to others, it's hard to minister yourself. You have to deal with all of the previous mentioned things as well. And on top of that, you don't have your parents taking you to church to make you read your Bible or anything like that. With everything I have mentioned, you can get caught drifting, straying. That's sort of what this blog is about. How to stay strong in your faith no matter what environment you get in. I am fighting this battle. I am here, right now. The Bible says in Romans 3:23-25 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." So if you are reading this and you are a college age student or soon going to be, have as much fun as you can at college, it's supposed to be fun. But, do not sacrifice your beliefs for fun, that's not the kind of fun you should be having. I look forward to continuing this journey with you all.(don't worry though, it will get better, I am still getting the ropes of putting it all in writing) Thanks. Signing off.
Today started out to the sound of my new roommate, to whom I know nothing about at all(#notmuchofatalker), rummaging through bags and the stuffing of closed-cell extruded polystryrene foam(a.k.a styrofoam) from his new printer back into its packaging. This went on for some time until he finally got it to fit in the box-only to lead to him setting up his new printer and hearing it go through an obscene amount of diagnostics tests to ensure of its capability to perform the day-to-day operations of the standard printer. A pretty snazzy new alarm eh? Well it worked, except for it going off three hours before I needed it to. So, I finally get out of bed-when I planned on-and checked my email just to see who is offering me what. Then, something detrimentally fantastic happened. An email from the professor of my only class on Mondays-more specifically, today being the first Monday, the first day of school-appeared in my inbox. Lone behold was it there none other than to tell me that my only class for today has been canceled. The detrimental part unfortunately is for her and her family for her son is very sick and was in the ER so please, everyone, PRAY for her and her family. Anyways, so there was no class for me today so I gleefully closed the lid to my laptop and jumped in the shower(roommate is still in room). After the daily hygiene routine, I come back to a locked dorm room. It is great to have a roommate who locks up so our stuff is not stolen, unfortunately he did not think about me not taking my key with me to the showers. Long story shortened, I end up in the main lobby of the dorm in my boxers only to find my roommate sitting there watching TV. #awesomemorning.
Moving on to the Word:
I later opened my Bible to read some passages for the day. I am currently in Romans and I read a passage from Romans 4. By this point in Romans, it is discussing righteousness and unrighteousness and the Law. It mentions throughout Romans 2:17-29 about knowing the Law and teaching it to others but sort of being a hypocrite, you could say. Romans 2:21"you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?" The next couple of verses go through other contradictions. What I take from what this is saying is that a lot of times, we-as Christians-often times focus on sharing God's words with everyone else, that we forget to share it with ourselves. Are we any better than those who we are trying to minister to if we don't even follow what we are teaching? From a college student's perspective, college is a tough environment to try to minister to people. Heck, it's a really tough environment considering all of the things going on: clubs, partying, drinking, sex, the list goes on. With all that going on you tend to think, or at least I do, they're not going to want to listen to someone trying to tell them about living for God when they know a lot of the stuff they are doing is wrong. But besides ministering to others, it's hard to minister yourself. You have to deal with all of the previous mentioned things as well. And on top of that, you don't have your parents taking you to church to make you read your Bible or anything like that. With everything I have mentioned, you can get caught drifting, straying. That's sort of what this blog is about. How to stay strong in your faith no matter what environment you get in. I am fighting this battle. I am here, right now. The Bible says in Romans 3:23-25 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." So if you are reading this and you are a college age student or soon going to be, have as much fun as you can at college, it's supposed to be fun. But, do not sacrifice your beliefs for fun, that's not the kind of fun you should be having. I look forward to continuing this journey with you all.(don't worry though, it will get better, I am still getting the ropes of putting it all in writing) Thanks. Signing off.
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