Month: June 2003

So why am I going to Poland? So I can get away from this busy life here, and depend on God. So I can focus on serving others, and being there for them. So I can understand God more, so others can understand God more. Because God has set it up this way, and because I want to serve him and love him. I don’t want to be religious, and do things just to look good, and have others things I’m a “good” guy. I want to know God so that he doesn’t say “Depart from me, for I do not know you”.

[Mathew 25:31-46]

“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those on the right, `Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

“Then these righteous ones will reply, `Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’ And the King will tell them, `I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

“Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, `Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his demons! For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me anything to drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

“Then they will reply, `Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’ And he will answer, `I assure you, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

So please pray, and if you feel it is God’s call, donate. Otherwise continue to pray for God’s guidance and wisdom in my life and the ones I will be entering. Thanks.

For those of you questioning parts of Christianity, or are looking for answers to common questions about Christianity, take a look here, it?s a lot to read, but its good information. It answers all the questions I had before I was Christian, and has made some of my current answers stronger. We have to remember that God created a plan, God has given and shown us the way, it may be hard to accept and follow, but it is the only way.

God’s plan is not politically correct, it does not satisfy those who are lazy, and only those who search for God and accept the plan will be with God. It is completely understandable to have problems with people, “religious” people; but to take those problems and then use them to keep yourself away from God and away from other people truly seeking God, which is when you will encounter problems yourself. This article tells it as it is, it’s hard for some to accept, but God has made it clear to us, why would he make it unclear? What God is that? Not my God, and not the only God of the universe.

Wow, this post from cre8d journal is exactly the reason I am going to Poland. I have been hearing from a few different sources that many of the Polish people are very “religious” and do not understand the joy of Christ. Reading things like this; lights a fire under me, it reminds me why I’m trying to raise money to go, why I have so much work to do. I need to get on this whole money raising kick anyway, so, if you could, please click on the Paypal donation link on my sidebar. I need about $500 more to get my plane tickets. The world needs Jesus, but most of all they need Christians to just be Christ like. So in preparation of that, I’m going to be studying a lot, studying my bible that is. Please pray, and donate if you can. Thanks!

Rar.

I wish I had a digital camera… it was raining earlier and now it’s beautiful! Eric if you read this, can I barrow your digital camera? I also need to remind myself to do my “day” project, I keep forgetting. So this is a note to myself. Digital Camera, Day project, call Cindi. Okay I think that’s it.

Have a good day. I am planning on posting something with actual meaning here, soon, but I’m at work, so I can’t really think straight.

Good god, school is done.

Well I left Cascadia for the last time today, well at least for a year and a half. This has been an interesting time in my life. I remember going into Cascadia’s temporary offices back in the summer of 2000, it was a small office near the Seattle Times building in Bothell. I took the tests, did my own registration, and I was so excited to be attending the newest community college in the state of Washington in like 20 years. Well, one of my first classes was a 6:30 in the morning web development class (a pre req for network support), boy I told my self I would never take a 6:30 class, you know what, I did, and I hated it. I even took a couple of Saturday classes in my years at Cascadia, and I hated those too.

I’ve been at Cascadia for three years, and I still don?t have an associate’s degree, but I have a lot in my head that I’ve learned. One is? I am really awful at Math and if I ever take it again, I’m taking only math that quarter. I do best when I have a friend in the class, it motivates me to actually go to class and do the work. I’ve learned to do things on my own even more. I love the college scene, even though at a community college it’s kind of lame, you don’t live there so many students don?t really care about it. I’ve seen Cascadia go from a school of 1200 to a school of 3000 +, go from bear cement floors (which I liked) to carpeted floors (which made it a lot quieter), and have many other things done to it.

But the best thing of all about Cascadia was Campus Crusade. I have no idea how much I have learned and changed because of CRU (Campus CRUsade). God used CRU so amazingly in my life. Because of CRU I became more independent, but at the same time a person who truly cared and wanted to be meet the needs of others. CRU helped me develop into a leader, into someone who could facilitate events, and work in a team. I have met some awesome friends through CRU, many of them are going to be life time friends, if not friends eternally. I will always remember the CRU winter and fall conferences. I just ask for god’s blessing on CRU at Cascadia and all other campuses around the world. It truly is an awesome ministry, and I just ask for God’s holy spirit to live and dwell and guide all who are seeking after him. I ask for every student at Cascadia to think and listen for God, and let the Holy Spirit come upon them, so they can make the choice to follow Christ.

I will miss CRU, I will miss Cascadia, and I will miss the people most of all. But I know God is calling me to different places for now. But who knows, I have a special place for Cascadia in my heart, we’ll see where God leads me.

Today’s Mess.

1. Wakeup at 8 to go to class

2. Get to class at 8:35 for final presentation ? Persuasive speech “We were meant to be?”

3. Class ends at 10:50 I get bumped from giving speech, this is the last day, must give before end of quarter ? tomorrow

4. 11:30 go to Red Robbin for lunch w/ John, Jen, Nicole and Sarah, fun times, of course I’m worrying about my speech though.

5. Give speech at 1:15 ? All goes great, my Instructor actually shakes my hand and tells me good job? wow awesome.

6. Get to work at 2:00 dink around, fix a few problems, etc, etc.

7. 3:20 Get to Tux shop to pick up tux for wedding on Saturday

8. 3:45pm Get home, start and finish one of the last assignments for my public speaking class, with 30 min to spare before deadline which is at 5pm.

9. 4:50pm Going to Cascadia one more time to do a video analysis of my final speech? yay.

10. 5:30pm Going to Mill Creek Foursquare Young Adults group, because I love it? hopefully I’ll see ya there? 7pm? Yeah baby?

11. Get home sometime around mid-night God is good.

I think I’ve figured something out. Even though I love making sure people are walking straight with the Lord, I’ve learned it is better just to let people make their own mistakes, unless they ask you for advice. People have to take the first step in order to be helped. This is a very hard thing for me to do, I want to so badly tell them and sometimes even prevent them from making the choices they are making. I hate seeing people fall into the same wholes over and over again. I hate seeing people get depressed because of their choices, for the most part (I know there are some physical reasons) I think depression is a sum of people’s choices. I would really like to see people grow stronger and stronger because they want to, not because they feel forced, because many times that fails.

It’s taken me five years to realize that the main reason I’ve gotten to the point I am today is because I wanted to, not because people told me everything I was doing wrong, and pointed out all the bad stuff. It’s because people pointed out the good, told me the good, and showed me the good by their lifestyles. This is hard for me to grasp, even though I now realize that it was exactly what I did. It’s true that a few events I went to, I listened to the speaker, and made a decision to try, but I believe the majority of that was the Holy Spirit using that speaker to further expose a problem I was already dealing with. All I can do is pray and give subtle hints to my brothers and sisters when I see them making a choice which does not honor God. My closer friends know what these things are, so I think it’s okay for me to say things here and there, I just have to be careful not to condemn them.

I need to read the word more, and be in prayer on a consistent pattern. I need accountability, I need to grow. I’m very interested in seeing how Jesus dealt with this situation, I think that’ll be my next series of reading, how Jesus dealt with the apostles when they made poor decisions. I need to be still and listen. Thank God school is ending, so I can devote more time to him, and really make a plan for my self.

Here ye, here ye. I declare my car has a curse or demon, or some evil hex? pray for it/me… So… the flat tire issue, the outcome… On a AWD Subaru Impreza WRX if you get a flat tire after about 10,000 miles of tread use, you have to replace all four tires, so you don’t mess up your AWD system. So, one flat tire, caused by a stupid water meter cover just before the Freemont bridge on Westlake Ave being loose and splitting the inside wall over my driver side rear tire, has now cost me $470! Thank God he’s provided me with these extra emergency funds, but I was hoping to have fun… oh well. But I’m wondering now, if God is telling me to sell my car to go to Poland… It’s an idea I toyed wiht a while ago, but felt like he would provide other ways… please pray, I really don?t want to, I have a good car, w/ no car payments, if I sell it I’ll need to buy another one, but I’ll surely have car payments…

So, this has been an intresting weekend. I think God is telling me something about my car… make a visit over to Jeffersonair for more details (june 7th post)… On top of that mishap, I’ve lost my front license plate, illegal in these parts… that’s another $20 or so on something I should have never needed to deal with. Oh and by the way check out the weather deal on my side bar, today has been GRAND! I tell you GRAND! Amen I love this weather, but not what we had for the last week, w/ the average temp being like 85 something… grrr. sick.

But when the Pharisees heard that he (Jesus) had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they thought up a fresh question of their own to ask him. One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the Law of Moses?”

Jesus replied, “`You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: `Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

[Mathew 22:34-40]

Love God with all our hearts, souls and minds. So, love God with passion because we don’t deserve his saving graceful love; with our actions, because he didn’t have to act to keep us around; with our minds in what we learn and teach. But we are to love others just as we are to love God. We are to equally love others, as we love God. We can do this by forgetting our selves and meeting the needs of others around us. Of course God doesn’t want us to be stepped all over and used and abused, but I can truly say I believe that if we serve others, God will protect us from those kinds of things. Maybe sometimes we are put through those kinds of things so that we can be a light to others, because we know God is just putting us through the fire to refine us and have all the crap burned off, so only the good will remain. So, I say this: Love God and People as you love your self, serve others as if they were your need, by doing this you are serving God, and in return he will provide for you.