Christmas Linebacker

Evangelism Linebacker

Hero performed by Michael Israel in New York

Famous Failures

Pachelbel Rant

Mandles

BluefishTV.com

Mr. Likes to Play Worship Music

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on a lighter yet still awesome note….

here are the lyrics to a song that God has been really blessing me through.

it is called “How he Loves” by John Mark McMillan

i bolded some of the lyrics in the verses that really stuck out to me. 

Verse 1:
He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

Pre-Chorus:
And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us so

Chorus 1:
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

Verse 2:
We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
And the heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, 
When I think about, the way…

Chorus 2:
He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves us,
Oh how He loves.

a thought…..

it is summer time and i don’t have a job right now so i have been doing a lot of reading and thinking. 

today i was looking at some facts and statistics and stopped when i came across this one

“The release of Rockstar Games’ M-rated Grand Theft Auto IV set new records for both first-day and first-week sales, moving a whopping 3.6 million copies internationally on opening day, bringing in $310 million. Total first-week sales around the world: 6 million copies, which tallies up to just north of $500 million. GTA IV’s performance handily topped the former video game record holder, Halo 3, which scored an estimated $300-$400 million internationally during its first week.”

before i read this i was on the Invisible Children website (if you have never heard of this organization check it out at www.invisiblechildren.com and share it with your friends). the gist of invisible children is to raise awareness and help stop what has been call one of the worse humanitarian needs of our day. i was also reading from Francis Chan’s new book “Crazy Love” (Highly recommend) today and he was talking about how God demands our all but yet most of the time all we give this GREAT and AWESOME GOD is our leftovers. we are content to give God less than our best when He gave us His all. He gave us His one and only son so that we can become His children. Francis mentions that in Malachi chapter 1 that God calls Isreal out on their pathetic sacrifices. Malachi specifically calls them out on offering sacrifices that are blind, lame, and sick. God poses the questions “why not offer it to your governor? would he be pleased with it? or would he receive you kindly?”(NASB) it is sad to think that people in the church today do the same thing. God doesn’t want our cold and stale leftovers. he wants our best or nothing at all.

we as americans have no excuse when a widow on the bible can give all that she has and we in proportion to what she gave(100 percent) can barely seem to muster up a measly ten percent for the God we say we love. we are more likely to spend more on ourselves than we are to give out of love to God. our own government wouldn’t even except that. somehow the excuse “i’m sorry i can’t pay my taxes because I spent all my money on what i wanted” doesn’t seem to legit. i can only imagine how this grieves God’s heart. this has been a very convicting thought for me and also a very motivating one. that is one reason i was on the invisble children website. i wanted to see what options i had to give to a worthy cause. that has been one of my major goals this year. to give more and to do so graciously and joyfully. the more i give and i see the needs in the world the more i see that the things i think i need pale in comparison to the needs of others in the world. over half the world lives on less than 2 dollars a DAY. that adds up to less than 730 dollars a year. that isn’t that much. we americans can easily spend more than that on ourselves in a less than 6 months and STILL have money left over. think about all the money that we spend on going to the theater, buying movies, junk food, music(that is a HUGE one for me), and/or books. this brings me back to that fact i quoted earlier (i know it is about time i got to that). internationally one video game brought in over 500 MILLION DOLLARS. just ONE disc in a case can bring in hundreds of millions of dollars. i don’t know about you but that is a BUNCH of money. Now imagine if people GAVE that much instead of throwing it away on a few months(if that) of mindless entertainment. if we are capable of spending that much we are also capable of giving that much. i think this is a huge issue that we as christians and as people in general need to address. Christians in particular are supposed to exemplify Christ attitude of unselfish giving, and not just the giving of our money but of our time and love, of all are resources. i know it is hard and i know i’m not the only one that is burdened by this but if this doesn’t bother you and you call yourself a follower of Christ i would ask you to seriously reevaluate your deffiniton of a Christian. Jesus called us to a life of total surrender and repentance. how can we live lives that are so apathetic and half-hearted and still say we bare His name. i’m not saying that if you are not giving a lot that you aren’t a Christian. Being a Christian doesn’t mean we are perfect. it does mean that we need to repent of our shortcomings and turn from them as best we can. and if you are not a christian or don’t have a clue to what that means then i’m sorry you had to hear all that, but i hope that you will see that there is a God that cares about the world and about you and whose followers long to do the same. if you have any questions about what it means to be a Christian or just about God in general please ask away. i don’t have all the answers. i honestly probably have very few of them, but i will look for the answers and ask much smarter people than I for the answers. 

i know this has been a very deep blog post. i don’t want to guilt people into giving, because true giving is done out of love. it doesn’t mean a whole lot if you give someone something when you don’t want to (i would advise against this. especially with your wife or girlfriend). i hope that this post will instead inspire and put into perspective that we should and can give. there are no excuses. even if you honestly have no money you can still give your time, which i personaly think is a much more valuable resource to give than money. francis does a much better job of explaining this in his book then i can do in a blog post so i again suggest that you buy his book “Crazy Love”. 

I pray that God will soften our hearts toward the needs of others in the world and in our everyday lives.

here is a list of organizations and websites that you can trust to give your money too. they are doing awesome things in the world. 

www.invisiblechildren.com

www.worldvision.org

www.tomsshoes.com

www.belmontfoundation.org

i’m sure there are many more that deserve to be on this list. if you would like me to add one leave the web address as a comment. 

My first official post

i posted this as a note on Facebook the other day but since i have a blog now I figured i would move it to here. so here it is…….

today i started reading Francis Chan’s new book “Crazy Love.” i’ve only read the preface so far but there was a thought i gleaned from it that really stuck out to me. in the preface he introduces his book(duh) and mentions that this isn’t another book bashing the church. He then says “I think it’s far to easy to blame the American church without acknowledging that we are each part of the church and therefore responsible.”

that is so true. i know often times i look at the church with a critical eye and lose sight of the fact that the church is made up of individuals and it is in the individuals that the problems emerge. you and me. we are the problem. i’m not pointing fingers at particular people. what i’m saying is that we need to own up to the problems in the church that we cause. when people criticize the church for being hypocritical or unloving it is because of the actions of individuals. we need to individually evaluate our own lives to see if we are truly living in accordance with God and His word. are we living out the Christian life the way it was meant to be lived? are you and me as members of the church bearing the fruits of the spirit? are you and me loving? if we want churches to change and people’s perspectives of what it means to be a Christ follower to change as well, then we need to start by changing ourselves. it starts with me. it starts with you. let’s start with the individual members of the body and thus improve the body as a whole.

this thought made me think of the Anberlin song “Change the world.”

so here are the lyrics and remember we can change the world by living the way Christ intended us to live….

Change the world
by Anberlin

If I could write one letter to the world as we know it
I would list these rhymes that mean everything to me
Heartache temporary, bullets only stop your blood
Pain will live on and on
In everyone, in everyone

And we could change, we could change it down
We could change the world, we could strike the chord
We are the lost ones, we are the lost ones
We could re-write history, if only you and me
We are the lost ones, we are the lost ones
And we could change it down

The bottle holds no answers
His lips can only sway
Chemicals imbalance
Who needs them anyway?
Desire is close at hand
Her lips can only sway
There’s more to life than this
Don’t give yourself away
Don’t give yourself away

And we could change, we could change it down
We could change the world, we could strike the chord
We are the lost ones, we are the lost ones
We could re-write history, if only you and me
We are the lost ones, we are the lost ones
And we could change it down

Don’t give yourself away
Don’t give yourself away
Don’t give yourself away

And we could change it down, we could change it down, we could change it
We could change the world, we could strike the chord
We are the lost ones, we are the lost ones
We could re-write history, if only you and me
We are the lost ones, we are the lost ones
We could change the world, if only you and me
We are the lost ones, we are the lost ones