Though there’s pain in the night

Well now I have the ability to post and have something awesome to post about. God calmed my heart when I shared my testimony, and as it turns out, its more applicable than I thought it could be. Something that showed me that God called me into the ministry there for a reason, and that was to be an encouragement.

Ya’ll Gatlinburg was an awesome trip this year as shown by the above pictures, and it was definitely a change being a counselor. But one thing I noticed, was that God was doing a work in everyone. I remember last year that the prayer and praise was consumed mostly by worship, and the time during which people shared their sights of God was slightly fewer in number. This year, there was a line of people wanting to share what they had learned from God. I was blown away by the number of people sharing their faith and I honestly wanted to share, but Andy got up their before I could approach the line.

What I wanted to share with you is from the song we sang. The verse “Though there’s pain in the night, joy comes in the morning.” Joy to me means something greater than happiness. It is eternal and it is unconditional. Its something that God gives and man cannot find without God. It is eternal happiness. It satisfies. It is the satisfaction that one finds from the Love of God that is found in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Guys as Christians we can know that regardless of the financial, physical or spiritual pain we go through there is always a joy on the other side. A never ending happiness we can find through Jesus. Always keep that in mind. God is Enough. He will not fail you, even if you fail Him.

 

----The Running Man

A little mix-up

Well guys I made a little mix-up. I said that verse was from 2 Timothy 1:12. It was actually 1 Timothy 1:12. WHOOPS. But o well. That’s almost more proof of how awesome God is. I mean, if I hadn’t mixed that up, I wouldn’t have seen the verse and I wouldn’t have been calmed (relatively its still rough). God works in mysterious ways ya’ll, but if He didn’t, well, I’d probably be screwed. Anyways, can’t wait to see you guys at Gatlinburg, keep praying for me that I have the nerve to speak in front of 300 people and I’ll see you soon! Hasta Luego!

----The Running Man

Real Quick Note

So I’ve gone through and rehearsed it twice and it takes about 10 minutes to go through. Should I attempt to shorten it?

How Great is OUR GOD?

Well guys as you read from my post from yesterday. I’m a little freaked out about having to talk in front of 300 plus people. And I know a lot of you guys have been reassuring me and telling me it will be fine and I’ll do great and what not, and I know you all truly believe in me and it won’t be that bad. (Thanks especially to Kathleen). Anyways I sat down tonight and I was gonna do some practicing cause its coming up and IDK I’m NERVOUS ALRIGHT? So I sat down first to have a quiet time, and as I mentioned previously, I’m reading through 2 Timothy. I’m kinda still on chapter one though, so I’m not sure how far I will get. Anyways, I started with verse twelve and immediately I almost started crying from the sheer weight that was lifted off of my shoulders by our Great God. It reads:

“And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting ME into the ministry.”

I was just reading this and I can’t help but think, “O Lord you are so awesome!” When I come up against something I really haven’t ever faced before. I get help from the Lord that I couldn’t even have imagined. I sit down and open my Bible and He has answered my prayers and conquered my fears. Granted, I could have taken ya’ll’s word for it that I would have been fine, but God wanted to tell me personally, and it is so AMAZING just seeing Him continue to reveal Himself to me.

Anyways, tonight was Maggie Chadwick’s soccer game, so here’s a lovely picture of me her and Smeds afterwards. We had lots of fun and got the whole fan section chanting “Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!” at one point. According to Maggie, we made the day of a few lucky parents and siblings. so GO DORES! AND GO GOD!!! HE ROCKS MY SOCKS EVERYDAY, SO I’M GONNA RUN INTO HIS ARMS!!!!

 

----The Running Man

G-Burg 2011

Alright so it’s a bit early to start posting about this except to say I’m super pumped about this. This morning Leo and I went mountain biking and it was totally rockin with the pouring rain. So sick. Anyways so we were walking through target doing my christmas shopping when I get a call from none other than Daniel Friday. He called to ask me to share my testimony one morning at Gatlinburg this year. Ha I was kinda shocked. I first off didn’t know they asked people like me to randomly share their testimony. Maybe there was a reason, or maybe it was just God. Regardless. I accepted the challenge of speaking in front of 300 people and telling them all about my journey into God’s arms. So since I figured it was a good idea to type it up and then condense it into a few bullet points, I decided to type it up here. So here it goes guys. The rough draft:

So, like most people here, I was born and raised in a Christian home, but at the age of 5, my parents got divorced. This divorce was really what defined most of my walk with the Lord. For three years, I didn’t really see my dad much until he reappeared and visited us at vacations and whatnot. We had a pretty strained relationship, but I still worshiped him like any 8 year old would. When I turned 11, I started to get angry a lot. It came to the point where I would blame my dad for just about everything.

Cause you know the Presbyterian Church teaches you a lot about God, and Briarwood Presbyterian Church was the reason I came to know the Lord. God is always faithful, God is loving, God will always be there for you. But when I looked at my dad and compared him to what I knew loving father was. I couldn’t help but be infuriated at the fact that he was nothing like the father that I should have. I wasn’t mad at God, I was mad at my father for falling short of perfection. It grew to the point where I didn’t want to see him or have anything to do with him. So one Christmas instead of being here at Gatlinburg I was with my dad over in Georgia. I was pretty unhappy over missing Gatlinburg, so I spent most of my time watching TV and deciding not to spend time with my dad.

Well, one morning, I think it was the 28th, my dad called us in and decided to have a talk. He wanted to know what he was doing wrong. Why were we so uncaring for him? Was he the bad guy? I had no response and so I sat there and said nothing. Afterwards I went into my room and sat down and really prayed for the first time in a long time. Now I mentioned earlier that I had become a Christian, and I did, but this was the point in my life where I really realized that I needed a personal relationship with God. A relationship where I talked with God regularly and where I knew what it meant to know Him. So I prayed to God. I asked God what I needed to do, who I should talk to, and why He wanted me to love him. I mean, this guy had caused almost all of my problems. He was the reason for all my problems. And I was called to love him?

Well Jay was talking at BYG about a month later when I realized what God was telling me. Jay was telling us that we were called, not to judge, but to love. Matthew 7:1-5 We were called to love the unlovable. “For even the gentiles love those who love them back.” God loves us even though we turned our back on Him. He loved us enough to send His son to die for us. So there and then I began to realize that God wanted me to love my father. Not judge him for being imperfect, but to try and love him as much as possible.

This taught me a lot in my walk with God, and I think was essentially my coming to Christ. I had prayed the prayer as a child and accepted him as my Lord and Savior in middle school, and at this point, I realized what it truly meant to have Him as my Lord. He was truly in charge of my life and has taught me to love everyone I meet as much as I possibly can. So that is the story of how I came to know and walk with the Lord.

So that’s my story. Let me know what you think.

----The Walking Man

C.S. Lewis

Soooooo I am kinda running out of topics to just make up so that I can blabber on for fun about so we will do a little summary of the past few days of my life plus some stuff on a book I’ve been reading. So:

Got back into town a week ago today, but I didn’t really do a whole lot, but Andrew stayed over. Wednesday I went mountain biking with Doug which was totally wicked awesome. I’m can’t wait to go back this week. That’s where I took this awesome photo:

Thursday, hmmm…. Thursday was a lax day and I think I was over with Hudson for quite a while. Friday was a day of trail riding and getting all muddy as shown below:

Pretty sick ride, and that wasn’t even the end of it. Saturday I ran around and did errands and stuff cause it was Os’s birthday. Then Sunday we had the choir party. Whoop Whoop. Yesterday I had an engineering party (we went ice skating) Booyah and then Caroling at the Smed’s spent the night, and now I’m home. I left a few details out along the way, but you get the general idea. I’ve been out a lot, and tonight is the camp bwood staff reunion! Yeehaw.

So I’m also reading “The Four Loves” by C.S. Lewis for funsies. Anyways it talks about the three loves that we see every day. Affection-love, Eros-love, Philia-love, and Agape-love. Each of these loves are complexities of human nature that are necessary for survival. Were it not for affection-love, we would not be raised with love and nuture from our parents. Were it not for eros-love, well, we wouldn’t be born haha. Agape-love saves us all from eternal condemnation, but Philia-love. How is the love between friends necessary for our survival? Honestly, its not entirely necessary for our survival, but it places us in a category above that of other animals.

Finding people who you do stuff with is finding a companion, and many people mistake this for friends. Friends, however, are companions who share similar opinions and life views and bring out the best in one another when they are all present. These are people who do not disassociate because of distance or time management issues, but can always reunite over the same topic. For me and a few of my friends. That topic is the Love of God. Honestly, if you look at any of your friends from church. If any of them decided they weren’t gonna be a Christian anymore, you would still see them every now and then and hang out and be “Companions”, but you would lose your similar views and likes and just couldn’t be friends anymore.

Two things of note, if someone isn’t your friend now because they don’t share the same beliefs now doesn’t mean they weren’t your friend then, but if something shapes your relationship by your proximity or something similar, then you may have just been companions all along. Another side note on the idea of friends is that you do not pick your friends any more than you choose the color of the hair on your head (yes I said that yesterday). God chooses them for you. He chooses them so that each may bring out the best in the other and that God may be glorified by them to the best of their abilities.

So in conclusion, I’m not saying go and reevaluate your friendships and decide to tell people you aren’t friends anymore. The term friends doesn’t mean the same thing now as then. Then it was a love shared between to people that was sacrificial, but was based on the idea of a shared principle rather than a deeper love as shown in Eros and Agape. What I am saying is take the time this break to appreciate your friends, and your Philia Friends. And if you forget one, let it be the former. See ya later guys!

 

----Walking Man

2 Timothy

Well guys its time for another post. Unfortunately, its not on the book of James, I decided that since we will be reading into 2 Timothy next semester at Navigators, I would give you guys a little taste of what I see now and what I see when it happens. I read to verse three before I stopped so I could create this post, and so this will be a tidbit of what I think. Another post will have a full laid out idea of 2 Timothy, because that is what I plan on studying over the break until Navigators starts meeting again, and after it does, we will see if my opinions have changed at all.

So starting with verses 1-3 there is quite a bit of material to discuss, so lets look at verse 1. “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.” Two phrases stick out to me in this verse. “By the will of God”, and “the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus”. Now I understand that its most of the verse, but look at it. This first says that we are servants of God, by His choice. We did not choose to be who we are, we were predestined. And that whole predestination/freewill topic is something I may spend some time thinking about in the very near future. But as C.S. Lewis puts it in “The Four Loves”:

“A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’ The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.”

We are not in control of who we are any more than we were in charge of the color of our hair. But contrastingly, we did choose to follow this path and that is the predestination side. We became followers of Christ, in accordance with the promise of life. We made the choice for life in Christ, but God also chose us for the mission because He knew we were capable.

Verse two is a simple blessing from Paul, but verse three says “I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day.” Now how can you do something with a pure conscience? Especially with everyone around you telling you that everything you do has some selfish and impure motive. My idea is that he doesn’t refer to conscience as guilt, but he refers to it as doubt. Maybe, Paul is saying he thanks God free from doubt that most people now-a-days have seeing as how the whole ordeal took place over 2000 years ago. Regardless, having a pure conscience with God is something we definitely should all struggle for.

Now the end of the verse. This is the part that made me want to write this post. It requires enlarged font

“As without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day.”

Guys, I wish I could remember all of you in my prayers night and day with such ease as it sounds to him. I need a little more motivation. I need to push myself a little harder, and I challenge myself as well as all of you, to try and remember people constantly in your prayers.

On a much shorter note, the choir party tonight was lots of fun, but both of our cars are now dead. The volvo is stranded down the road and the van is on our street but overheated or something because it is GONNNNNE haha. Doug is coming by tomorrow to work on it, but I thank you guys for any prayers and I can’t wait to see you guys soon. Lots of love!

 

----Walking Man

A Look into James

Morning guys, I know what you guys are thinking if you read my last post. What?? 930 isn’t early! And shouldn’t you be at church?? We a. 930 isn’t early I’ve been up since 8, I just had to shower and get into location for studying for the next 2.5 hours until work. My first exam is tomorrow night and the second and final is tuesday morning. So I should be home by then. I have a ride, it just all rests on my boss, who won’t respond to my email or texts. But I did receive a response email from my cousin Morgan who is in Afghanistan. Please pray for him and his brother Noel. Morgan is in north Afghanistan (seeing relatively little action lately, but overseas nonetheless) and Noel is in east Afghanistan (seeing a 20% rise in violence this past year). Noel should be coming home before Christmas, so he’s almost there, and Morgan should be home by February and is applying for law school.

James 1: 19-20

So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Brothers and sisters, we must be open and receiving. We as Americans, are quick to anger due to the short natured temper we all posses. Do you ever talk to someone and realize that they interject with their own tidbits of information every 2 minutes regardless of what you say? “O yeah I was flying on a hippo the other-“ “O yeah me too! I had a purple one! It was so cool!” And they go on and on for five minutes before you ever get back to the story? Have you ever been talking to someone and realized that YOU were the one interrupting? It’s usually me. We focus things too much on ourselves and not enough on just listening to what the other person has to say. Even if you aren’t one of the people who interjects all the time. You are probably the person who sits there and thinks about the time you were flying a purple llama and you are thinking how funny they are gonna think your story is. Then you realize that you haven’t paid attention to a single word they’ve said. We just aren’t patient. We aren’t quick to hear or slow to speak, and if we were, so much more could be done and so much more trouble would be avoided. So just be quick to listen next time you realize that you are focusing more on what you are ABOUT to say than what your friend is saying.

----The Walking man

Yeah… It’s pretty early in the evening…

So I decided to change the background anyways. You guys didn’t respond in time, so I picked the bridge picture just cause I liked the city landscape as a background. The tree is a cool picture, but I don’t think it works out as a background. Anyways. Let me know if you don’t like it. That way I can tell you to get over it and you can move on with your life.

Anyways, yeah its 12:36 right now and I don’t really feel like going to bed. I’m not sure why, I’ve been up since about 7 this morning, and I plan on getting up relatively early tomorrow just because… Well… I want to be more efficient. I don’t know why or what can explain it, I have just been motivated to do so. That’s what happened this past week. I got motivated and I spent literally 18 hours reading in the Commons Center. 6 hours in my Calculus textbook, and 12 hours reading through my Chemistry textbook. I mean… That’s some hardcore studying right there. More than I’ve ever done before. My Italian teacher screwed me over though. Giving me easy a’s all semester and then for the four assignments we had for “finals”, she gives me 84,85,84,86 and so now I will have an 88 in the class. This is the difference between a 3.4 and a 3.65ish GPA. Needless to say, I’m unhappy.

Well I’m pumped about being done, and if all goes well, I’ll be home chilling on Tuesday night. Otherwise, I may be here until Saturday night. MORE unhappiness. But O well, It will all work out for the best. Can’t wait to see you all though. It will be a rocking good time. More Buffalo Rock Pong. BOOYAHH. Anyways, I’m gonna go study some more Calculus, tomorrow, another Look Into James.

----The Walking Man

Oh You Make Me Smile

Well I’m sitting here back in commons on the upper floor. Basically I’ll be here all day studying for Chemistry once I finish this post. And I think this one may be a long one.

To start, Let’s take a look into James. James verses 17-18 of chapter one. They say, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”

Now it looks like I randomly changed the font sizes of various words right? Not random. Every good gift and every perfect give is from above. Guys, God only gives you what is good. He does not tempt anyone as stated earlier in James (I have the analysis of previous verses in my Looking Into James tab). Everything that God does is to benefit us (Romans 8:28). Everything good comes directly from God. Not from anything that YOU have done, but everything that HE has done. HE sent his son. HE allowed Jesus to die. HE has done nothing to harm us, and everything to hate us. Why then do we (me included) turn our backs on Him? It’s almost as if we have some nagging thing called fleshly desires that, when we feel like we’ve been doing pretty well, tells us we weren’t meant to do well and makes us sin.

This next part is my favorite part of this passage. “With whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” God will never leave you. Just like He always sends things that will always do you good, He won’t just give you a care package and run away. He will help you with your fights because He knows that they are already won. God only gives you gifts because He knows that you will forget that He’s there. If you knew He was always there, what assistance would you need in going out into the world and doing your best to share the gospel with everyone?

When you are stressed out about exams, know that you are His. You are of His will. He CHOSE you. And He chose you for a reason. We may not know what it is, but there is a reason. How does this relate back to exams? God picked each of you and blessed all of us with talents and abilities that we could use to glorify them. What are you stressing out about when you are stressing over exams? “I need this grade”, “I came here for a reason”, “I have to do well”. Guys, you did come to school for a reason. And in one of my earlier posts: http://thepathdesignedbyhim.blogspot.com/2011/08/black-ops-broke.html
I told you that our purpose is to glorify God with everything we’ve got. And guys, one of the reasons God picked you was so that you could praise His name. And that’s one thing you can do when you are stressed out. Continue to have your quite times. Continue to pray to Him, and praise His name. Because all things are His. If anything guys, we should be coming to see Him more with these exams. We need to set aside more time to talk with Him and remain focused on what we need to be focused on. This completely includes me and thanks to Leo, we are getting on a better track of making things more habitual.

Well that’s all I’ve got on James, but I’ve got a few more things to talk about. First off, I have some new background choices. Let me know if you like any of them more than the one you have now.

So what’s up with me? Exams are coming up. Chem monday night. Calculus tuesday morning. Shouldn’t be too bad should it? I had no class tuesday and no class today so I’m sitting and pretty much reading through my textbook to learn the stuff I skipped for Chemistry. I’m gonna do my best to find a ride home asap, I just have to talk to my boss and make sure its fine that I miss the following weekend. I can’t wait to be back with you guys again and I can’t wait for GATLINBURG 2011! Get pumped guys! I’m so ready for another awesome BYG trip! Its so cool! Kinda hard to believe that I’m a freshman in college though that just finished his first semester away from home. It’s a pretty crazy difference. But I enjoy it. Alright, well that’s all the time I’ve got for today. I’ll talk to you guys soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlJFvxad1_A

watch this.