Random Questions...

So, I do not know why but I just get these random questions in my head. I usually do say anything but I think I am going to. I had a question pop into my head last night.

Would you want to live in a world without comlplications? What does that even look like?

I am not totally sure what this means. the context in which I think it came up is that lately I have started seeing one of my friends in a different light. I do not know why but she has just become of interest to me. To me that is a complication. Even though I know that I will not act on it because I never act on feelings. It is kind of complicated because those feelings are there. That is just an example of a complication in my life.

Truth be told...

So there have been a lot of things running through my mind. One of the biggest things has been friends. Something that I have been thinking of is what is it exsactly that makes a friend?Because I relized that i am not sure if I ever really knew. Is it when you you hang out with eachother? Or is it when talk to each other? Or maybe when you help someone through something? I do not know. Is there even a kind of criteria? Who can you consider your friend? I think that sometime we just like to think people are our friends even when there is no reason for it. I also think that some people are friends because they were once friends. I know we are all supposed to be brothers in Christ and I thoroughly think I try and live it out. But sometimes I think that us as Christians do not try to grow closer to eachother. It is hard for me about this but a lot of the times I remember before I started going to chuch and how much easier it was to open up to people, I do not know why. I have thought about this and I have called a lot of people my friend. not that I do not want to be their friend or that I am not their friend. Also, that I feel like a lot more people are my friends than i am a friend to them. Even though there are so many people who have been there and helped me through things I still feel for some reasons that I cannot trust them with who I really am. For as long as I can remember I have only showed the people a part of me. I do not show everyone the same part. So, I think that years and years of this has finally caught up to me. That all the parts of me that I have given and shown eachother have all been jumbled together, with many parts missing from the people in college that
I was always gunna be friends with. And now I really feel like I do not really know who I am. I know who I was, the funny guy that everyone used to call and hang out with, and who I want to be, someone that is respected by others and loves God thoroughly.

The dark side of my testimony...

So, yesterday I checked my myspace for the first time in like four months, and I was wondering around my friends profiles. I ended up on my friend Kim's profile. Kim used to be more like a sister to me than a friend. She is prolly one of the top two people I was closest to. it was between her and my best friend Steven. Well, Steven had always gone to church, but always thought it was stupid and never put anything forth for it. He stil went every sunday cause of his mother. well long story short, Steven gets into church and then gets me into it. I was very busy between school and work already. Now adding church and youth group and small groups on top of that. No time for much else. So, the extremely unfortunate thing that I realy still struggle with today is that I left a lot of my friends behind. Friends that I said that I would alwyas be there for. Now Kim was prolly the person I miss the most. After we stopped hanging out a lot she started to fall into the wrong crowd. She began drinking and doing drugs, and she starting hanging out with all te kids that had drugged themself stupid. She used to be a cute lil tomboy, and now she is thi whole other person. I'm not saying she is, because she won't talk to me so I don't know. For a long time I felt responsible for her making the wrong choices by not being there, and then I felt like I got shot in the face when a couple people, some people I was trying to build a relationship back with, told me that if I would have been here she would not be like this. More than one person told me this. Now, I really feel like this is totally my fault. Now the question is: What do I do?

Got Water...

So, I was chilling in my friend Sabrina's room and she showed me this video and I gotta admit it is pretty awesome. Let me know what you think.

One of my favorite sermon illustrations....

Back during the days before automobiles, two preachers met in a certain town. The first asked the second how he was doing. “Furious!” replied the second. “Someone has stolen my bicycle and I think it’s one of my church members! I don’t know what to do.” The first preacher said: “Here’s what I’d do. I’d preach on the Ten Commandments this Sunday and when I got to ‘Thou shalt not steal’ I’d really hammer it home.” The second preacher said, “I think I’ll take your advice.” The next Monday, the first preacher ran into the second one and saw that he was riding the bicycle. He said, “I see my advice worked.” The second replied, “Not really. When I got to ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery, I remembered where I left my bicycle.”

Believing...

So, I watched part of Polar Express with my mom tonight, and the basic moral of the movie is to believe. For those of you who do not know Polar Express is baout a kid who does not believe in Santa, and how he goes on this fantasy journey where he ends up in the North Pole. Sometimes I think that we as Christians want those kind of experiences. I am talking about the kind of experiences where you basically finally get it. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with those experiences, but I do not think that it all comes down getting everything all at once. I have definitely found out the hard way that it takes a lot of learning and experiences to get anything.

Heart Issues...

So, soemthing that has been on my heart for a long time is that since I have begun my walk with Christ I have left some of my friends behind. In particular one friend of mine. Her name is Kim and I seriously love that girl so much. She was closer to me than almost anyone else. But once I started going to church I had to make some decisions that would help me in my walk. One of which was to leave some of my friend that were bad influences behind. She was not a bad influence, but when Ileft the bad influences behind I started spending a lot of time at church. Eventually I spent almost all my time at church. Which meant Kim was being ignored. Right now Kim is doing drugs, from weed to X, and drinking alot. I have always felt it was my fault not being there for her when some bad things went down. The worse thing is that there was someone else there to catch the pieces, not a good somebody. Tonight I talked to someone else that I left behind and was not a good friend too after she had always been so loyal and good to me, and she told me straight out that if i would have stayed around she would have not ended up this way. Right now my question is "Is it worth it?" to live this life and hurt those who love and need you in thier lives. The answer of course is "YES". There is no other life, but sometimes coming being libing most of my life in the world and of it, it is really hard to live in it and not of it. Right now my mind is swimming with regrets, which sucks cause my phrase in life is never regret but don't forget.

A new saying I learned this weekend is:
"The past is history, the future a mystery, and today is a gift. That is why it is called the present"

One Change Leads to Another...

So, something that I have noticed about people, especially on campus lately, that when people change their relationship status something else changes too. It has just been getting on my nerves that when some people get in a relationship they think that it fixes all of their problems. Since they think that they feel like they need to spend almost every free moment with that person. This just really upsets me, especially when college is supposed to be the time where you build friendships. I just do not realize why people do this. If anyone has any understanding of this I would appreciate it.

T.D. Jakes...

Just Watch....

Balance...

So, I have always known that when you have balance in your life you will be more efficient and joyful. Lately however, I have forgotten how important this can be. Yesterday i gave all of my stress and worries up to God and after this He blessed me with peace. This morning I woke up fully rested and ready to praise God. That is something that I wish I could do everyday. I plan on training myself to do so. Part of my training is waking up at six O'clock in the morning to pray. I just want to state the reasons that I am doing this seemingly insane task. First of all, The time that Jesus prayed the most was early in the morning before the sun rose. When I am getting up I am not praying by myself, I am praying with a couple other people. This is because in Acts the most common kind of prayer is corporate prayer. I think that this is something that is necessary, because it addresses two of the biggest problems on campus. The first is lack of community. I have spoken with several people on campus who feel that the feeling of community has dropped dramatically since the closing of The Hole. The other is the lack of prayer on campus. I just feel like the feeling of urgency of prayer is dramatically lower than it should be in a school full of people who love God. I am not trying to insult anyone. If you are offended in any way by what I have said then I am sorry but it is the truth. There is so many things that need improvement. I am also not saying that we all suck at life. There are so many amazing qualities of the people on campus that makes this campus an amazing place to be.

A song that I have loved since the first time i heard it is...

Contentment...

So I used to think that once I wanted to just be content it would be easy to attain. I do not know why I thought this, because it has been one of the hardest things I have ever tried to do. Lately I have been doing things that remind me of how I used to be before Jesus found me. Once I realized this I tried to turn it back around and realized that it was harder to turn from it now that I have been saved for a while than when I was first saved. I realize now that I have not been trying as hard as I could have. Once I reached a place where I could feel comfortable again I felt like I was being pulled down again. This is when I realized that God wants us to be content in every situation. So this is when I started to strive not for happiness but for contentment. When you are living in a world that is messed up as the one we are living in, where every thing in life is being manipulated by the media and we are constantly being told that we are not good enough and we need things to make us better and we need them NOW, it is hard to be ok with yourself and the situations that you are in that are not ideal. I know that discipline plays a big part in the journey to contentment. And spiritual discipline is something that I need to work on.

On the lighter side here is a video that makes me laugh.This video was shown to me by my wonderful sister Sarah Lang. Who I love so much.

Did the right thing....

So I did the right thing today, and apologized to someone I was a jerk to. After I talked with her I was finally able to focus on the homework that I have recently not been able to focus on. However, have you ever had one of those moments when you know you should have brought a conversation in another way. Well I should have continued this conversation towards concerns that I had.

What is right...

So lately i feel like sometimes I feel like I can be a jerk. When I told somebody this the first thing they told me was that everyone is a jerk on some level. I told her that I didn't want to be a jerk, and that I wanted to apologize. They told me that no on is perfect and if I was only apologizing to try and be perfect then I should not do it. I told her that I really wanted to do it because I felt like I had hurt the person I was rude to.
What I am thinking about this right now is why it would be bad to strive for perfection? Are we not called to be like Jesus, who in every sense of the word was perfect. I think I know what she meant by this though. I think that she was trying to tell me if I was trying to appear perfect through my actions than I should stray away, and I would agree with that. I hate it when people do things just so that people will look at them or think they are great or think they are retarded. People should just live their lives as the way God had intended us to live them. With a modest attitude

People are like a tree...

So if you do not know this about me I love Tyler Perry's character Madea. This is an excerpt from his hit play Madea Goes to Jail. This is some amazing advice that I think everyone should think about.

My Bucket List...

So I decided to put up my bucket list so far, but remember I am a very corny guy.

1. Kiss the girl i love
2. Know what it really means to live for Jesus
3. Eat at a restaurant in Italy
4. Say what is really on my heart
5. Stand up publicly for what I believe in
6. See Poland
7. Have a job I love
8. Do something selfless for a total stranger
9. Wear an Armoni suit
10. Create a dish with Bobby Flay
11. Watch a sunrise
12. Watch a sunset
    
13. Go to Africa
14. Stand on Calvary Hill
15. Shoot a gun
16. Spend one year in overseas missions
17. Kiss my girl while slow dancing
18. Be in a huge field of flowers and/or tall grass
    
19. Smoke a pipe
20. Hunt
21. Paint a Picture
22. Be a chef for a day

I know a couple of these are kinda homo, but these are things that I one day hope to do.

Bucket List....

So, ever since my mom was diagnosed with cancer three years ago I have been thinking more about death. For those of you that do not know my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer Feb of '05. She was treated with chemotherapy and is now rid of it. After watching the movie the Bucket List I have been thinking about the things that I would like to accomplish before I die. With writing them out I have realized that there is a lot of things that I would like to accomplish. I would recommend writing a bucket list it can help you prioritize some things. I am trying to decide whether I want to post my list or not, because it is very corny.

Basic thoughts...

I have had this song on my mind since quest started this year.


You guys should go to this website and post a response to the song. http://www.praisecharts.com/live/articles/432/1/You-Are/Page1.html

First real blog ever.

So this is my first real blog ever, and I do not really know what to say. If you have any questions about me and who I am as a person let me know. I will probably do another blog later. I hope you all have a good day.