Ch-Ch Changes

John 3v20 says “He must increase, but I must decrease.” I have heard this scripture a ton of times but today is was revealed to me. In the past month I have made it a point to make God the center of my life. For far to long he was just one of the influences. As I have done this I have notices things changing in my life. Certain convictions that I previously have not had not suddenly seem much more evident. I could not figure why this change. This scripture came to mind and BAM it hit me. 

As I am decreasing and letting God have more control, He is increasing. Things that I once maybe found ok to do or say, are now just not cool to say. I am not trying to be better then anybody, I am just saying what God is doing in my life. 

I believe as we do decrease and He increases, things begin to change in our life because we take on the character of God. This is what I want in my life. I want to be what God has called me to be, not a lazy 2nd rate person to whom I should be. 

I remember once saying, Well I can do this or say this because my views or convictions are different then theirs. ( which can be true) However in my instance I found the character of this person to differ mine, when his character reflected that of Jesus. Scary thought. I no longer want to compromise how I have been living. I want what God has for me in its fullest. 

This is not some camp experience where I get excited, or a conference. This is just everyday times I have spent praying an seeking God, and this the result. 

I write this because I dont want anyone thinking I am trying to be better then anyone, I am changing certain things, but this is why. If you just trust Him and really give Him all of you, great things will happen.

Love

Sigh… Love… What is it? Well I am sure if you were to ask a child what it was their answer would be simplistic in reasoning, maybe saying that love is letting me play with a toy. Then of course the bibical definition of love… ” For God so loved the World…” Love has been and can be defined in many different ways.  Love is something we all search for. Some of us have found. We look for that person that we can spend the rest of our lives with. The person who will make our heart feel like it never has.Some people spend their whole lives searching for this love, some claim they have found it, yet others claim it doesnt exist. How can this be? Me?Well the longing I have for love is so great I know it exists. I know she is out there and is feeling the same things inside of her heart that I am feeling. People tell you to be patient and stop thinking about it…HA!  Is this possible? We are surrounded by reminders of love and marriage everyday… On tv, in our friends lives, in the bible. The word MARRIAGE is lingering in front of us as if to say only a select few can have me, and your not it! As the days and weeks and years go by I wonder what is it I have to do? Rob a bank so I am rich? Na I do have a good job, and my head on straight. But what do I do besides sit here and write how I cant find it.I will say the worst part is I do like someone, and have for some time, however I am nothing but a mere vapor to her… actually i am friends with her but I wanted to use that line. She treats me like a good friend, her looks of frendship at me are retured with looks of hopefulless at her. I see her and nothing else matters, what a cliche, but its true.I could be mad, or sad, and i see her and nothing matters. I sit waiting, waiting for that signal, that sign, that one word or look that says.. ” Yes Karl you may enter” I wait and wonder if what i am waiting for is pointless…Then i think well this person is worth waiting for… working thru… That all the sadness i felt of not being able to be with her would be washed away in seconds and forgotten about forever… What woman can have this power… what is it about her? About the way she smiles? Or laughs? Or calls you that she can have complete control over your life. Is it love? Not recipricated love, but love none the less. As I sit here I wonder if there is someone out there thinking the same thing? If her.. with her angel like qualities is there searching for the same thing… If what she is looking for is me? When will I know…. 

Negative Christians

I think as Christians we need to stop being so negative. Stop thinking the world is going to go to hell tomorrow and we better bunker in for it. I heard someone say the other day, I know things are going to get bad soon, people are going to be poor and needing money and everything is going to go down hill. Of course that is my interpretation and doesn’t sound the same way I heard it but I think you get the point. I believe God is doing great things, and soon things are going to change… for the Good. You can disagree with me, and that’s OK, your aloud to be wrong. For example, the sub prime in the real estate market fell out… those of you who don’t know what that means, well its bad. You heard news stories about how bad the real estate market was. However, now things are changing, from someone who works in the real estate market, i am seeing things changing. I am seeing the market picking back up…slowly..but it is. I believe there is a renewal coming to some of us. financially, spiritually, emotionally.  Some of us? Yes , I believe those living with the mindset that things are just going to suck, well they are going to suck for them. We need to change our mindset, and believe in what the bible says about being prosperous. Standing strong on that, and holding on to our dreams and visions that we have. Don’t be discouraged, but be encouraged, and know that if you stick with it, and you push thru that mindset, you will see success… DON’T GIVE UP!

Now Hes Gone

Well this is a post that will change your life. Its more for me then you, but feel free to read. Now that Gary is gone its weird. I think about it and hes dead. It is as if a chapter of my life has passed and a new one has started. Sometimes its so hard in times like this to understand what God was thinking. You want to, and I have, tell God he made a mistake, what good did it do to take this person. I look at it from human perspective, and I see a sad family, and a wife who was left alone and it hurts. I am the christian and i should have some sort of comfort in this whole thing. Instead im upset with God, as if my being upset can or will change anything with me, or it will make God realize he messed up. Its like my reality is a dream, a bad dream, and i am trying to wake up and hope everything is ok. I know as the grieving process runs its course that it will get better and be easier.. but right now it really sucks 

Answer to Prayer but Still Sad

Today a great man passed away. My Step Dad. As you have read in my previous blogs he has been sick. We have been waiting for this to happen. I believe in my heart that he was saved, and God gave us that opportunity. Amen. Today Gary woke up in pain with over 105 degree temperature. The Nurses gave him more meds to comfort him. My mom and my aunt were in the room alone with him and my aunt, being a christian, said lets pray. They prayed to God that he would please take him, that it was so hard and knew it was his time. So my aunt had left and my mom went outside and prayed by herself and said God please take him…. Without them knowing, today at 4pm, i was praying to God and I said ” TAKE HIM GOD, IF THIS IS YOU WILL FOR HIM TO DIE, TAKE HIM TODAY, OR ELSE I WILL GO AND PRAY FOR HEALING”  i wrote in caps to show i was not just talking, but yelling…raising my voice to God. When my mom had gone back in she was sitting there, and he slightly opened his eyes, and in my moms words; ” it was like he was looking at people saying here I come” and then he shut them and died…. I thank Jesus for his answer, but am still grieving at the loss of a great husband and father.

Just Ask

Well it is Saturday morning and I just gone done writing the Eulogy for my step father. He is still alive but he has just a very short time left.There are so many things we face in life everyday, and sometimes we just deal with them on our own strength. I am starting to realize no matter how big or small the issue we are facing we need to lean on God and his wisdom.For so many years in my life I have struggled with sin and just different issues. I never completly trusted God. Maybe I didn’t want to trust God because i knew it would cause me to live differently? I am not sure. As i face this new mountain in my life i have found myself closer to God then I have ever been. A wise man once said ( Pastor Hughes)” that situations like this either bring you closed to God or put you furture away from him.” I look at this situation and wonder. About? Well things… But in Gods infinite wisdom he has put me in a place where I have learned to trust him and rely on him.As Americans we want to be so independent. We want to do everything by ourselves because we think this may make us a greater person. As if we will try to handle a situation without God and He would look down and say “well would you look at that, he actually did it by himself. I am so proud of him…” Of course not, life isn’t meant to be lived alone or without God. We need to have God has the center of our lives.I think to many times we have God in our lives, but maybe just with finances, or maybe with our marriage. But when it comes to anything else we may have the tendency to do it by ourselves. God isn’t a Kindergarten teacher looking down on us and saying “come on you can do it all by your self” ; he is looking at us saying I want to help you, just ask… so I want to encourage you to just ask…. just ask…. just ask. 

Passion for the lost? Or for Yourself…

OK. As of late I have been facing a very stressful situation. As many of you know my step-dad is approaching death. He has been my step-dad for about 15 years and I can count on one hand how many times I have shared the gospel with him. Why? At times I would say he will come to church soon, or it will be more effective if I just pray.  ***Side-note – I hear people all the time saying Amen and Preach it! when different speakers talk about sharing the gospel. They get excited and say they agree that more people should. So if all those people ( myself included) are agreeing and making it look as though they are out witnessing, then why haven’t we seen significant growth??  So back to the Lost. In the past week the Lord has been burning a passion in  my heart for my family and for the lost in general. I have also been convicted for my lack of passion for them and my immense passion for myself. We need to get serious and ask God to instill a passion in us that can be pushed down. A passion that burns so strong it almost hurts. A passion that can not be drowned out by our feelings, out emotions, or our laziness. We should not look at it as a chore but as an honor. We have all heard this preached. And maybe I already lost have my readers on this one because they figure this isnt for them… Funny thing is it probably is for them. Think about it though, your friends and your family can burn in hell for ever…. Or they can have Eternal Life with Christ Jesus Hell? That bad?Definitions:

1. the place or state of punishment of the wicked after death; the abode of evil and condemned spirits (dicionary.com)
2. The place of eternal punishment, of extreme torment, etc.; the abode of evil spirits ( www.innvista.com/culture/religion/diction.htm)
3. In the New Testament, hell is the place of judgment where God sends all evildoers to face fiery torture and everlasting punishment. ( www.bibleresourcecenter.forministry.com/vsItemDisplay.dsp&objectID=1C9C620D-4336-4B79-A93034AF9269A5C7&method=display)

 So yeah those definition’s definitely break it down.  The second one is the one that turned my head… Eternal punishment…EXTREME TORMENT… This is where people are going because of our selfish ways. Becasue of a mindset that says I cant or I wont or I dont have to. We never know when someone is going to die, but even if we did would be get off our lazy butts and witness to them? I knew my step father was dying, yet I did not share the gospel with him until very late in life. How many times as Christians have we done this? I don’t think I am the only one. How may times do we wait till the last minute? How many times have we seen friends or families self-destruct and only if they have had someone introduce them to Jesus it could have been avoided.  We have a job as Christians. I think we are blessed with influence. God gives us our arena of people we can touch. This may include work friends, family, school buds; people you always hang out with. God has so strategically put this people in out lives because he knows we can influence them and share the gospel with them.What are you doing with your influence? Are you reaching the people in your circle? I think its great to go on missions trips, and travel the world to help people, but what the heck is the point of doign that if your life cant even effect the people who see you every day. We has Christians need to get desperate and cry out to God. As you have heard preached we are only on this earth for a short time. What kind of impact are you going to make? Are more people goig to heaven because of you or are more people going to hell?  Which train are you driving? 

A Story

So one time there was this Christian names Freddy… Freddy was a pretty good guy. Did he have issues? Yes of course. Freddys biggest problem was how he complained about everything. one of his main issues was saying tings were not the same anymore. That prayer wasnt good, worship wasnt the same and that the church neded to step it up. So he went on with his life with this atitude. One day he had church and he got there a little bit early. So before service at his church they usuallly had some sort of prayer before service… He would never go, he already knew how much it lacked the presence of God and that it was a waste of time. This time though he thoguht he would go, he had some personal struggles and was at a spot where he needed God to do soemthing. So Freddy stepped into the prayer room and to hs astonishment people were praying. Not just Lord bless me prayers, but world shaker prayers. prayers that would wake God from the deepest slumber if he was to sleep. Prayers of old which he compared everything to. Then suddenly he had a revelation. That the church had moved on without him. While he was stuck in sin, and doubt, and different issues the spirit of God had been moving. He hadnt taken time to listen to God or see what God was doing. He realized he was so far away from what God was doing that he could not see how powerfully he was moving. Freddy realized that God had been doing amazing things, but becasue he got caught up in himself, an life his spirtual eyes had been blinded. He repented in his heart that night and gave his life back over to God… For Good…. Are you a Freddy? Dont miss out on what God is doing, dont be blinded by your own arrogance, and your own thought of how everything should be. Open your eyes to what God is doing and get involved in it.

What God Spoke To Me #1

I am currently reading Too Busy Not to Pray by Bill Hybels. Have you ever started reading a book and their was a scripture reference and you got something out of it that really doesn’t go along with the book? Kinda here….Leviticus 26v3-4, 6If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. 6 I will give you peace in the land and you will be able to sleep with no cause for fear…In my own life as well as others I have heard people say I cant wait for breakthrough, or “when will i see more people get saved”, “Or when will I be blessed?” I think one of the key answer to this question is the first part of this verse, ” IF YOU FOLLOW MY DECREES AND ARE CAREFUL TO OBEY MY COMMANDS”, Do you spend all your time asking other people to pray for you? Do you sit around and complain that you need a breakthrough? Do you go out and sin all week then bring your butt to church and have a leader pray for you and expect the blessings to just flow? At times, you will face situations where you will need your friends to pray for you and need them to come by your side. However what are YOU doing for your breakthrough, what are you doing that you deserve to see the Rain of God come into your life? Do we receive the blessings of God because we didn’t swear for a week, or we didn’t go out and commit some horrible crime? Well i am no theologian… but I don’t see this bringing the blessings of God ( However this behavior probably wont be going on if your doing it right =) ) I believe as Christians we need to take responsibility for our breakthrough and not ride on the wave of everone else praying. If your riding on the wave and not making any of your own, eventually you will drown. God loves us so much and cant wait to bless us… and its so simple.That verse goes on to say “I will send rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. 6 I will give you peace in the land and you will be able to sleep with no cause for fear… As christians we need to obey God all the time and live like the Word of God tells us to live. Not just on sundays and wednesdays or whenever you have church. When we begin to obey God and live according to the word thats when the blessings will come and the rain of God will come into your life.I want to end this note with encouraging you to get your breakthrough. You press into God and ask for what you need. I could go to Thomas and have him pray for me and maybe feel a little bit better, but until i get on my knees and in the face of God i will not have my breakthrough. I will not experience the true presence of God unless i ask him for is. Last note… Living off the breakthrough of someone elses life is like a child borrowing a toy from a friend, eventually he will have to give it back and he will no longer have it… If it were his toy, he would have possession of it and it would be his and his alone and only he would appreciate the true awesomeness of that toy.