Do I truly love God?

If I love Him, wouldn't I spend time with Him? Not neglect Him?

I wouldn't neglect someone that I love. I'd spend time with him or her. So why don't I spend more time with God?

How can I be a witness about the transforming power of His Love if I don't show that I'm transformed?

I keep going back to the old me. The way I used to be.

Except it's the way I am if I'm constantly returning to it, isn't it?

I neglect God and stay caught up in sin. Pride. Sloth. Lust. Hate. Gluttony.

It slowly destroys me. Or quickly destroys me.


I left cleaning until the last minute and all of my frustrations threw up all over the place as I was straightening up. My anger towards my friends for always leaving stuff all over the house and never cleaning up after themselves. My anger towards my parents for everything that I still haven't let go of. My anger at my friends for not letting me get a point in in a discussion or interrupting me when I do or bashing my point without bothering to try to understand it. My lack of attempting to avoid sexually tempting situations. My lack of control about eating when not hungry.

I went for a run at 5 am. It started off as a cloudy morning. Lightning crackled as I left. By the end of it, I was drenched.

I needed to get rid of my frustrations.

God,
Why do I do this to myself?
Why do I try to do things on my own when I know I need Your help to do the tasks you have put before me?
Why can't I let go of the past?
I WANT YOU TO DESTROY ME!!!!!
I can't be the person You want me to be. I need Your Presence in order to be that man.
I'm a little boy who refuses to listen to his Father.
I can't be who I need to be the way I am now. I need You to destroy me for the sake of me.
For the sake of those who You want me to show love to. I can't radiate Your Agape without Your constant Presence.
I can't do it unless I'm simply a receiver. I need You to control all of my actions in order to be the man You have called me to be.
I need Your ever-present Spirit, always. I need You more than I could ever express. I need You so I can love You.
I'm hellbent on destruction and hellbent on hell. I want You to save me from my fate. I NEED YOU to save me from this fate.

A Week Without Shoes

We all take things for granted. Our clothes, our house, our water, our electricity, our freedom to say what we want, our freedom to believe what we want, our shoes.

A few months ago, God placed it on my heart to go without shoes for 1 week to see what it was like to not have shoes, just like most of the world, and to learn to appreciate what He has given me.

One week couldn't be that bad, could it?

I waited until the end of April because I didn't want to get frostbite on my feet. I still ended up walking in the snow. From a friend's dorm back to my house. I ran barefoot in the snow. I ran because my feet were getting numb and I wanted to get home where it was warm.

It was a challenge. I have blisters on the balls of both feet and some of my toes.

I sincerely hope that I, and whoever reads this, will not take for granted anything that I have: my many shirts (way more than I need), my several pairs of pants (a pair of pants with holes in it is still a good pair of pants, it does still provide the function that pants are intended for), the house I live in (there are many people, even in a relatively well-off community such as Fargo-Moorhead, who are homeless), my car (which is now broken down, but it was useful when it ran), my bike (which I just found on Monday for free on the boulevard. I was lucky to find one in one piece, let alone one that just needed a quick tune-up to be ridable. Lucky for me, there were free tune-ups on campus the next day), my shoes (I own 2 pairs that only have small holes in them, and a pair that has no holes. That's 3 more pairs than a huge percentage of the world's population), my friends (I am truly lucky to have gotten such great friends and I often take them for granted or treat them in terrible manners), my family (I may fight with them a lot, but I love them), my God (Whose grace I am far from deserving), and my God's forgiveness (which I should have worn out long ago, but, lucky for all of us, is unending).

My feet after a week of going barefoot. They are raw, blistered, calloused, in pain, and thankful that I have shoes and will be wearing them again.

So let us never forget how much we have and always appreciate the little things that make our life great.

As I was going out to my sister's in Bismarck yesterday, I had the urge to go someplace that didn't have the visible signs of civilization. I want to visit nature as God created it. No houses, no apartment buildings, no store, no factories, no farms. Not even a road. I just want to see actual nature. The closest that I've ever been is a campground, but even campgrounds have man-made trails, litter, and some development. I just want someplace where I can forget that there is anybody in the world except me and God.

Why I Turn to God

A Band-Aid is supposed to cover a wound while it heals. It's supposed to protect. I have several Band-Aids in my life, most of them are not helpful at all.

Food
Lust
Alcohol
Video games
JESUS

These are my Band-Aids. 4 of them are infecting and 1 is an antibiotic.

All my life I've turned to food. It has always been a comfort and still is. I would eat and eat and feel better for a while, but then the pain would seep back in. All it did was cover the wound, and not for long. This germ-filled Band-Aid gave me comfort momentarily and then I felt worse than before. Now I feel full and bloated from the food.

I've struggled with lust for years. What person in America hasn't? I've turned to people in pain or for selfish reasons. I would spend time with women specifically for the physical comfort that they could bring. A hug, cuddling, or something further. It would feel very pleasant at the time, but by the end of the night, I'd realize that I had done something wrong. Even before Jesus saved me, I would have these feelings. I would realize that I was turning to someone to satisfy my desires and that it was only harmful.

Alcohol would only make my other struggles worse. It would fill me with lust and make me hungry. And it was considered socially acceptable to act on these desires while drunk. Seeing people drink brings back these memories and the memories of growing up with alcoholic parents.

Video games are a huge time waster for me. I can still spend hours playing video games alone, doing nothing constructive. After I'm done playing, I just feel empty and miserable inside.

The only thing that I've ever found to fill me up for any length of time longer than just over the duration of the event is Godly time. Either spending time alone with Him or talking with people about Him, they both fill me up for extended periods of time. He is all I need and I look forward with much anticipation to the day that I get to spend eternity at the banquet at His Father's house. There will be no more pain and no more lusting after earthly desires. Nothing but eternal heavenly bliss. And it can be your fate also if you just accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ~ Romans 10:9

Until next time, God bless!

A Reminder of a Broken World

I cried Tuesday afternoon at work. I was sitting in the office that I work in on campus and I logged into Facebook. There were a lot of status updates saying that people were praying for my hometown of Perham and praying for my high school and that what happened was a tragedy. I had no idea what it was that happened, so I went on chat and asked a friend that I graduated with. She told me that on Monday night, a boy shot and killed his girlfriend and then turned the gun on himself. He was airlifted to Fargo for medical treatment. I thought that this story was terrible, and I was saddened by it, but the sadness wasn't anything compared to the grief that I felt a few seconds later.

My friend told me the names of the two teens involved. And then things got real after I realized that I knew them. Dylan Cox and Tabby Belmonte. Tabby had just given birth to their daughter 7 months beforehand.

I don't know if I ever spoke to Dylan during his life, (he died Tuesday in the hospital) but I had spoken to Tabby. She was a friend, not a good one, but still a friend. She always brightened my day. Even being pregnant at 15 didn't stop her from being happy. She became excited to be a mother. She was sunshine on a cloudy day.

This tragedy is a grim reminder of the broken world that we live in. A world that so desperately needs God's healing Love. A world that we, as disciples of Christ, should be reaching out to every opportunity we get. We don't know what will happen a minute from now, so we must seize the day and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone. If we don't, then someone could miss out on an eternity of paradise, an eternity with God, with no pain.

My wish is that from the tragedy that befell the Perham area on Monday, we will all remember that life is a short, precious thing and we should take every moment that we get to radiate God's perfect, never-failing Love.

http://www.valleynewslive.com/Global/story.asp?S=14319088

yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ~ James 4:14


Could all of you reading please pray for the families and friends of Dylan and Tabby. Pray that they will find comfort in God and in each other and pray that God will make something good come out of this. And please pray that Dylan's and Tabby's daughter Emma will grow up into a beautiful woman of God, radiating His love to all despite the life that she now faces without parents.

Thank you and God bless you all!

Scenic Route

I've been impatient lately. Restless. I want to do His work. Now.

And I know that I do His work everyday by showing love to others, by keeping my eyes open for opportunities to spread the message of the Gospel, by getting to know my friends better, by doing ANYTHING out of love. True love. Agape.

I feel that the restlessness that I've been feeling is a call to action. What sort of action that is is something that I don't know yet.

I want answers from God. Now.

I want to know where He's calling me to do missions work in the future, even though I won't be doing anything until at least January, and most likely not until I graduate.
I want to know if I'm called to be married with anyone or if I'm called to a single life. And if I am called to married life, who am I supposed to be with?
I want to know if I'm going to be an addictions counselor like I've been planning on for the last year and a half or if I'm going to be a career missionary.

Why do I need answers right now? Why can't I just enjoy what I know and have?

Abraham and Sarah waited for TEN YEARS before they received Isaac. They needed the kind of patience that only the Holy Spirit can provide.

I need that same patience because it could be a long time before I receive answers.

I was listening to music on Youtube and the Jars of Clay song "Oh My God" was a recommend video. While listening to it, I was reminded of their song "Scenic Route" and of the bike ride that God took me on last summer.

I felt restless one night. I didn't want to stay at my parents' place while they were drunk. I got the urge to go for a bike ride, so I did. Anything to get out of the house.

I got on the bike, started pedaling, and I felt something in my heart. The Holy Spirit was directing my path that night. Every crossroads that I got to, I checked which way the Spirit led me. I urge you all to do this in your own lives. PLEASE LET THE HOLY SPIRIT DIRECT YOU AT EVERY CROSSROADS YOU COME ACROSS.


I rode around Perham on my mom's bike for over an hour. It might have even been longer than 2 hours. I wasn't keeping track of time. I do remember getting impatient though. I knew that I was being led somewhere, I just didn't know where. I wanted to know!

Eventually, I got to my destination. I knew I was in the right place because the presence of God was so strong that i nearly cried.

I was at St. Paul's church. I rode around the tiny town of Perham for I don't know how long, taking some streets 3 or more times, passing every church in town except for 2 (it was at least 5 churches that I did pass), going by St. Paul's once or twice already, all to end up at this church that I was called to attend.

Why did God send me on this long path to get to a church that is literally only 3 blocks away from my parents' apartment? I believe that it was to give me a lesson in trusting in Him and to teach me patience. He wanted me to start walking by the Spirit more.

Why was I sent to St. Paul's anyway? I don't know why it was that church in particular. I do know that that was where He sent me and that He wanted me to spend a lot of time with Him along the way, so that's what I did and what I'm continuing to do.

American Media

Today was my mom's birthday, so I drove from Moorhead to Perham to surprise her. On the way back, I saw the same billboard that I always see outside of Detroit Lakes. And it always makes me feel the same way.

The billboard I saw was for Zorbaz, a pizza and Mexican food restaurant/bar. One side of the billboard has a man dressed up like a hippie and the words "nicely baked" in huge letters. This implies a pot reference. The other side has a tap beer and the words "one is the loneliest number you'll ever do". You need to have more than one beer. One beer isn't enough. You MUST binge drink.

Both of these signs fill me with disgust and sorrow. Growing up in a household with alcoholics and pot-heads, I know how torturous these common drugs can be. Why does culture have to glorify them?

Why do we have a culture that glorifies sin and not God's love? The high that Jesus gives us is so much greater than anything alcohol or pot can produce.

When I drank, alcohol would just draw me towards more sin. I would become filled with lustful thoughts. I'd want to eat even though I wasn't very hungry. I would become sad, either because the alcohol itself made me depressed or just amplified my preexistent depression. Either way, that should have been enough of a reason to stop, but it wasn't. Even after I woke up from a night of throwing up, falling over, and realizing that I'd done some pretty shameful things, I'd decide to drink again some other time.

The one time that I smoked weed, I was filled with similar thoughts, only happier. I was past my depression bu this point, but I still made terrible decisions.

Why does media feel the need to portray these destructive drugs in such a positive light. As social objects. As  adventure starters. As tools for fun.

Why aren't they just show for what they are? Physical poison. Mental poison. Spiritual poison. Why do these substances get attention as the source of fun when they are the source of pain? Why do they get more exposure in our media than the only true source of love, Jesus?

Why do we continue to intentionally expose ourselves to this filth every single day? Why do we watch TV and movies about the adventures of druggies? Why do we listen to songs about drinking all day? Why do we read magazine articles about night clubs and the best-tasting mixed drinks? If we want to end the prevalence that these drugs have in our media, shouldn't we boycott the media that emphasizes them?

Shouldn't we replace these toxins with more positive media or no media at all? Imagine how much closer we could be to God if we spent our time absorbed in the media absorbing ourselves with Him.