What a Day

So it started off with Jesse and I watching the FIFA World Cup game that decided whether or not the U.S. would proceed onto the semi-finals. It was a nail-biter and quite entertaining to watch considering we got robbed of yet another would-be score...dumb refs. Anyways, it came down to the very end in which the refs added 4 additional minutes to the play time and the U.S. finally scored off a blocked shot that bounced back towards Landon Donovan! It was an exciting game to watch and Jesse and I yelled in cacophonous bursts of joy! Haha, well after the game we got to cleaning up the house...and stumbled upon a history-in-the-making tennis match between 2 great players. John Isner from America and some dude named Mahut from France...all I can say is that at this point in time, while I'm posting this, they are at 118 games. Over 9 hours of tennis playing spread out over the course of 2 days...3 counting tomorrow if no one seals the deal. Holy cow though, I want Isner to win!!!

After that we left the house at which we were staying, we came back home to clean up also since we have relatives coming over for the weekend. And so we all had things to do: I had to start washing the '86 Honda Civic which we are trying to sell, after that I had to completely rearrange my room, essentially by myself (with small help from my brother and father, thanks guys), Jesse had to clean up the loft and help mom with rearranging the family room. So it was a pretty busy day. Jesse also had to leave because he had to get stuff at the church ready for youth group...everyone is just so busy, at this point in time, I am still not completely done with getting my room together...I never realized I had so much stuff.

So my main problem with all of this craziness is that I forget to give time to God. How can I even dare to say that? It is just so frustrating when you want to do something so bad and you have it in the back of your mind but it just always seems to slip away, what a dumb excuse...haha. I just need to figure out a way to set aside a specific time of the day for my bible study and time with God alone. Otherwise, it just gets flaky. I just need prayer to get going, I know I pray and talk to God constantly but I MUST get into the WORD more...I hunger for it! There's just a big gap between action and words. Well, whatever happens...God shall be praised.

As the Do Work Crew verse goes...

James 1:22:-"²²Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

Matthew 5:6-"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."

An Always Faithful God...

Tonight, my brother led the youth group again as he will be doing until he must go back to Master's College to finish his biblical studies. The lesson was mainly centered around the story of Abram and Lot as he was taken captive and robbed of his possessions. If you are not completely familiar with the story, the long and short of it is this....Abram and Lot, over some time, accumulate too much stuff and do not have a sufficient amount of space to support both families and their cattle. So Abram gives Lot the option to either take the land to the right or the land to the left...Lot, of course, takes the land that is more luscious and green while Abram is left with the "leftovers." God honors this step of faith to Abram by blessing him with abundant descendants that will be prosperous, at least eventually. The way that God decided to show this act of blessing was to have Abram do a customary "sacrifice", if you will, in which he would cut a ram, goat, and cow in half (and killing a dove and a pigeon). This customary sacrifice which was practiced in those days, was an act which solidified a promise between two people. The symbolic part of this procession was for the 2 people -making the promise- to walk between the severed animals. Now, you ask...what's the point of cutting perfectly good animals in half? Well, that was to show that if one of the persons in the binding promise broke that promise, they were now subject to being cut in half as well.

Now, after Abram did what God asked him to do. "A smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces (Genesis 15:17)." This was the symbolic display which God showed to Abram to remind Him that He would keep his promise. And because God cannot be killed, He is telling Abram that He will ALWAYS keep His promises. The crazy part is that it was only God Himself walking between the severed animals, not God and Abram. This is revealing God's true love for us because we, as humans, cannot always keep our promises to God...but God ALWAYS remains faithful. This is just crazy and awesome to think about, in my last post I said that we are encouraged to never say never, all, or anything of absolute certainty by the world of "logic." From what I have seen and experienced in this world (albeit not that much considering I'm under 20), God is the only one you can AWLAYS count on...your friends, yeah they can be awesome buds but they are not physically always able to be right there with you. Your parents, they are there with you a lot of the time, but not always. You yourself aren't even always completely there for yourself.

But God, He is always faithful, even when we fail and falter...He is there. When we spit in His face and tell Him He can't control us, He still loves us. Even though we, at one point, were enemies of God because of sin nature...HE DIED FOR US! If that ain't love then I don't know what love is. He wiped our slate clean so that we could start a new life in Him.

Romans 5:9-11-"⁹Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! ¹⁰For if, 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! ¹¹Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

We were once alienated from God, but through His Son...we have a way to get to God and have a personal friendship. His Son died for you and me, all we have to do is believe and accept Him as our Savior and we will be saved, truly awesome. We were once enemies of God but we have been reconciled and bought with a bloody price. He loved us so much to do this, is it too much for us to just suck it up and serve Him? But, there are some Christians or nonbelievers who don't want to go to church because of two-faced Christians and thus, don't want anything to do with church or be around "church" people.

If you are a Christian out there or simply an onlooker...if you are tired of seeing "fake" or hypocritical Christians and want to leave your church simply for that reason, take a minute and think. Wherever you go in life, whether that be a "Christian" church, a Catholic church, Methodist, or Lutheran, the military, your workplace, your home life....anywhere you go, you will find "fake" or hypocritical people. If you are tired of seeing fake people or being around them...then BE REAL, step up and live what is right...be the one to practice what you preach, it's easier said than done, but the rewards for being the "sore thumb" will be far more than worth it. The most rewarding, inner satisfaction that you can receive in this life is between yourself and God. I guarantee it. The straight A's you get only satisfy for so long, helping the old lady across the street only satisfy for so long,unless, these deeds are done with God in your heart and your motives purely for God alone. Then and only then, will you truly feel happy and more importantly, joyful.

Ephesians 6:6-8-"⁶Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. ⁷Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, ⁸because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free."

God is always faithful to us even when we aren't to Him. He gave His life for us, let us make Him proud.

Observing Creation...

Well, today...I felt pretty darn lazy, although it started off a little rough. Now, I went to bed late...it was about 1sh when I actually went to sleep. But I was rudely awakened this morning (6:23 AM to be exact) to a frantic father desperately searching for the truck keys. He asked me for mine so that He could just take off and look for them later, but of course, right as I was about to take them off my keyring, my mother announces that she just found them and so my dad left...and I was awoken for nothing. So I slept for another 5 hours getting up at roughly 11 o'clock hoping that there would be some chores for me to do so that I didn't feel hopelessly lazy. But now that my hardcore working grandmother is back she had already folded all of the laundry and done the dishes (which is actually pretty sweet). Anyways so I felt pretty darn lazy this morning, so I decided to do something with myself and so I ate Dyno-Bites Cereal (knock off brand), took a shower, put on contacts, brushed my teeth and I proceeded to play video games.

Anyways, I was pretty much waiting around for my friend Wes McGrath to call me up so we could go on this long, difficult walk up through the mountains to some cell phone towers up near Harris Grade road. It was a lot longer than I thought it would be but it was great for me to actually get out and do something...so we finally get to the top after about 50 minutes I think and we just took some time to soak in the view.

Wow, I could not help but be amazed by the creativity of our God. It is simply breathtaking to look out on all of nature and just think about the fact that the same God who created this awesome planet...loves me. The beautiful rolling green hills, the soft breeze of the wind, and the sheer size of the mountain we were on were just indescribable. It just got me thinking about the creativity of God and how intricate this planet really is. Everything up to the top of Mount Everest to the deepest depths of the ocean has its true beauty and profound complexity. And how awesome it is! It just boggles my mind that there are some who think that all of this happened by chance, a huge mishap. Take life, for example, is it really safe to say that ALL life came from one central ancestor? Now, I don't know about you but math, logic, and science itself tells me to never say all, never, always, or something with complete, absolute certainty...because they tell us that nothing is ever 100% certain. So, to me, they kind of disprove themselves with their own "logic." Or have they decided to change their theories on us again? It just seems that their reasoning and logic is flawed.

Take the universe now, for example...now scientists have barely even tapped into the great and massive expanse of what we now know as space. Yet, they claim (at least their latest theory claims) that the universe we know today all happened from chance and from, essentially large build-ups of dust clouds that (you'll never guess) by random, chance events came together and formed individual planets, and on a more extreme level...galaxies. Their theory about the Earth today is called the "Big-Bang" theory as you well know...and that theory is basically this...all energy and matter was compressed into a "cosmic egg." The theory goes that the egg exploded with a "Big-Bang" ( creative ain't it) forming hydrogen gas which eventually created the world we know. But the question must be asked...how did this explosion occur? Or how did all energy and matter become compressed into this egg? Where the heck did the egg come from in the first place? All of these are unanswered legitimate questions. The LAWS OF SCIENCE ITSELF DISPROVES EVOLUTION, THE BIG BANG THEORY, AND ALL OTHER THEORIES.

I apologize for this exceptionally long post but it has been on my mind. So, first up is the First Law of Thermodynamics. This is the law of conservation of mass and energy in fanciful terms. Anyways, this theory states that energy and mass can never be created or destroyed. So again where did this egg come from? Or referring to the other theory that a massive asteroid hit stuff and created earth...what made that? Seriously, it all leaves unanswered questions. Now, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that matter will become more disorderly and "confused" over time. Now, reread that last statement...then refer back to the "Big-Bang" theory and tell me how they can even conclude with it. First of all, evolution itself took billions of years, apparently, and eventually life was created from nothing, essentially. This violates the First Law of Thermodynamics. Secondly, the "explosion" or popping of the proverbial balloon of all energy and matter....violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that disorder never creates order, in this case, an explosion or "popping of the energy/matter balloon" (the big-bang theorists get upset when we say explosion).

So these are the facts...science does indeed disprove evolution. But wait that could only mean one thing, Intelligent Design or ID for short. This already offends people and we haven't even mentioned the name of God yet....I believe most people do not want to believe in the existence of God simply because they do not like the idea that they do not control their own lives or that they have to answer to an authority. Most people do not like the idea of submissiveness. To them, they are their own masters and do not care about anything or anyone else. Others just take it as a nice bedtime story or a huge fairytale. But when you look at the facts and evidence...Creationism is a perfectly credible theory. The thing that gets me is that both Evolutionism and Creationism are theories yet, one is put down because of religious offenses and the other is taught as if it truth and absolute fact. WHICH IT IS NOT! It should be on the same level as Creationism but people don't want to be told that they are wrong!

I believe everything on Earth is created by one God. A God who is not bound by the laws He Himself put in motion, for if He were bound to them...He could not be God. This God never began for He has always been here...its mind-boggling but it is what the Word of God says and from what I've read and experienced as a result...this stuff is true and it has never been proven wrong by anyone or anything. It is such a privilege to say that I serve this very same God...it is unbelievable to say that this same God loves me...and it is life-changing to say that this God died for me. I have witnessed His creation and to me, the evidence and logic is undeniably in the favor of God. I am saved by His grace alone, now some may ask...how are people who have never heard of God held accountable for the same things we are? Good question but I believe most people know that there is something out there that they need but they do not know what it is...they see creation and wonder the same things, how did all of this get here? The answers lie in the Word of God...He makes it obvious that He exists. So let me close with some scripture...I hope these provoke deep thought. I am passionate for the God I serve.

Romans 1:20-"²⁰For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."

Colossians 1:16-"¹⁶For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him."

Isaiah 40:26-" ²⁶ Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:

Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one,
and calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing."

This God, who created this amazing universe...loves you....yes you, and nothing can ever change that.

Romans 8:38-39-"³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

We cannot get to Him through anything else: by being good, confessions, rosaries, giving tithe in church, by getting baptized...

Acts 4:12-"¹²Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

We only get to Him by believing in Him and that He died AND ROSE AGAIN....

Romans 10:9-11-"⁹That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. ¹¹As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Amen to that...we ARE SAVED by a loving and awesome God!

Ain't Always Peachy

Tonight was my first time being back to the youth group while having Jesse being thee "dude (leader/youth pastor). He changed a lot of things since he has been given the responsibilities of leading youth group as well as leading the worship on Sunday mornings, but I must say, for the better. I believe that what happens is the same routine over and over again...and the church can get so used to that routine that WE, as a church, get focused on the "tradition" or structure and get knit-picky with pointless criticisms. So I guess what I'm saying is that I appreciate Jesse coming in and changing things up a bit. I can understand that it can be difficult sometimes though when people don't share that same passion that you do.

Anyways, the thing I wanted to focus on was the lesson taught tonight. This has probably been one of the more different lessons I've heard in awhile. We get used to hearing that if you just trust God, everything will come out great for you in the end. And no doubt, what happens in the end will ultimately be better for you somehow simply because that is God's will for you (granted you are walking with Him). But if you really think about it, its NOT ALWAYS going to end up how you want it. We, as humans, have this instinctive idea that we need this or that...but do we really? We have it, in our minds that God WILL give us what we want if we trust Him for it and are faithful to Him. And yes, sometimes that fact is true but we need to learn the meaning of NO. The truth is, God will NOT ALWAYS give us what we want. I was reading the other day in Romans 8:26-27 "²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."

WE do not know what we ought to pray for! Sometimes we need to realize that we can, in fact, be wrong in our desires for something. But the awesome thing is, the Holy Spirit prays for what WE NEED and most importantly "in accordance with God's will." This boggles my mind. So I guess the thoughts I want to provoke are ones that can always turn to God no matter when everything is flushed down the toilet. This is hard! What is easy these days anyway? I find myself struggling with this perpetually. So lets stop turning to alternatives and turn to God first. Why ask creation for advice when we can ask the Creator? It's always easier in word than deed but that is what separates a flaky "Christian" from a bonafide believer!

Day at the Beach

So my good friends and I took a trip to the beach today and what a fun time it was! It was great seeing my old friend Chris again too along with just spending some great quality time with Ben, Jesse, Frank, and ASHLEY (lookin good by the way) ;) We were able to do some mini-ultimate frisbee along with some football tossing followed by some body-surfing! The water actually wasn't too bad at Gaviota (saltier than I remember ocean water being), not as nail-biting cold as Surf or other beaches I have been to. It was also great attempting to improve my tan next to Ash in her bathing suit...chea. Anyways, I thank God for not letting me burn as easily as I could have but mainly for my close friends. These guys truly stick closer than a brother (despite the fact that one of them actually is my brother, but still) and are quite awesome to have! I love them all dearly! This has been such a great start to my last summer, which is both sad and exciting at the same time. Lots of things come up but I'm doing my best to let God have it all, because as I have learned over and over again, if you don't give it to God...you will gain nothing in the end. What a love and what a God we serve!

Reminiscence of a Savior

It does indeed perplex me. The thought of such a strong love and desire for my redemption. Can it be truly grasped? Can it be truly understood? I think not. Such a love, not a soul on earth deserves. Unless, the act of one such perfect sacrifice would be offered up to atone for the nature of our wrongdoing. For we were born into captivity. We were bound by the chains of sin. But the sacrifice has been made and the perfect Lamb was laid in the grave. Yet, death could not be master over Him. For He is the master of all. The very break of the waves, the complexion of our human structure, the universe itself- they all obey His Will. This very same master of all…died. He died so that we could live. This master, is love.