Men's Bible Study

On Wednesday nights I go to a bible study associated with Northern Hills Community Church. We briefly start with everybody, then split into groups based on grade and gender. So the senior guys group is talking and such and the talk meanders its way over to girls and the impossibility to fully understand them. We came to three conclusions:

1. Their monthly visits are God’s way of keeping guys on their toes, so just as we think we start to understand, everything gets changed up and we have to start over. (Hypothesis provided by Matthew Harris)

2. Women don’t even fully understand themselves.

3. With conclusions 1 & 2, men may be able to start to understand women.

(Don’t steal these ideas cause they may one day be the inspiration for a book, or if you write a book anyway, you should give me a cut)

The bible study was actually focusing on Matthew 15:9-17, talking about Jesus’ love for us and our love to him and everybody else, but specifically ‘Agape’ love, a love that comes with a decision, not because a love by only emotions, but one that may require some effort to truly care for somebody. Then we ended the night listening to ‘Mood Rings’ by Relient K. A good night.

We will speak against senseless laws until they are reformed; and, while we wait, we will abide by them.

Denis Diderot

Peace

Jesus speaks of loving our neighbors and our enemies. How does war fit into that equation. I’m not even going to bother talking about current wars, but I have been thinking of our past wars, the ones that we have some hindsight on. For instance, the Revolutionary War, should Christians have actually taken lives of others to defend ‘God given rights?’ America claims to be a nation “under God” but we are one founded on a violent uprising against another nation who also believed had God’s interests in mind. How is this violence justified?

XC

Is it worth the pain? I have to take ibuprofen before running races in order to do well so not to be overcome by pain, but I hate taking pills to cover up the pain (and reduce the inflammation). And then like today I get pain the morning after once the effects of the drugs fade away. I don’t like the constant covering up of symptoms. Just a little more than a month left of this.

Fil O Sohfy

So there was the 2nd Philosophy meeting today at school, but my first. It began with the topic of Religion and tried to start with answering the simple question of “Is religion needed?” Well there were pretty much 3 groups of people, the atheists who some thought of it as a crutch, the Christians/Catholics who would say something about God, and then others who I didn’t really get to hear or determine what that they thought cause I could only stay for part of the time. Everybody was divided into 2 groups due to the large amount of people but my group had a hard time answering the topic or even staying off topic getting into squabbles over matters of energy, atoms, infinity, the beginning of the universe, cars, abortion, and other junk that was loosely related to the topic. As I said I didn’t stay till the end but all the thoughts I really had on the actual question didn’t really come to me till after I left. One was that on the most basic level, man needs very little to survive, and so technically, no, religion is not needed. Then to those who viewed religion as a ‘crutch’, I could see any belief of anything to be a ‘crutch’. The belief in atheism and only being able to look to yourself and mankind could be considered a crutch helping you to overcome the sinfulness of humans or the thought that there could be a force that you cannot fathom and can’t predict and understand. But hey, it just philosophy, right?

7th place

In the meet today I got 7th place at a decent 20:16 considering how far we are into the season. I got 4th on my team. We did great placing 1st, with our top 5 people at: 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, 11th. And btw, I love my team and we all did amazing, the girls team got 2nd which is great.

On a similar note to the last, in Cross Country you are encouraged to try to run with somebody else during a race, usually a teammate, so that you can continually push each other to get a faster time. During today’s race I was in a group of 3 most of the time which kept me going, though I may have been too dependent upon the group cause I started fast at the beginning and slowed down too much waiting for the others to catch up so I could run with them. Oh so dependent…

SYATP

7 AM students began to circle around the flag pole in prayer. When I arrived at 7:02 there were about 15ish people and it at least doubled in size with 3ish teachers participating as well. It was encouraging to see students, many of whom I didn’t know, gather together boldly praying to Christ.

On the radio I heard of a girl who was the only girl at her school praying which was discouraging and encouraging at the same time. Saddening due to the fact that no one was their to support her but awesome since she had the courage to stand there alone. Unfortunately I heard of a local school in Phoenix who had absolutely no students there. I’m not saying there are no Christians there, and its not like you are not a strong believer if you don’t go, so now I’m not to sure why I said unfortunately. We have a Christian group at our school called The Refuge, formerly Youth Alive, that headed this event and really publicized it. I think that every school should have some way of uniting together in Christ’s name.

On that note I really hope for Refuge to grow because although we had a large amount of students at the pole, few participate in the group which mostly consists of a Wednesday morning worship session followed up by a speaker. It is a beautiful way to start the morning. Unfortunately I think it is all too common for Christians, specifically high schoolers, to act as if Sunday is God’s day, and maybe even Saturday, but then Monday-Friday school and other stuff is the top priority and God is forgotten. I know I have sinned in my time management and I use mornings like on Wednesday to help give time to Him. I also attempt to go to a Wednesday night Bible Study, and I also have a Romans study on Tuesday mornings. Again, unfortunately, I believe I have been using these as the only means to put God into my schedule during the week. I am not having my daily devotions and (as talked about in my last blog) misused my time. I still adamantly believe that we should be actively involved in Christ centered groups especially ones that try to spread The Word throughout the school like The Refuge, but it is not a replacement for my individual one-on-one time with God. This is what I need to work on.

Another unfortunately, I have noticed that only doing things when I’m in a group is not isolated to my time with God, although that is probably the worst area, but it is also with running, hence Cross Country, and with studying for tests and other school work. I pretty much will not run if it is by myself there needs to be another person or else I just won’t bother to do it. Same goes with preparing for tests or doing homework. I just don’t get around to it unless I can plan a study group or something of the sort. It is pretty unfortunate that I am unable to find that internal motivation. It wasn’t always like this, more so since high school, when my grades and work ethic started to slide. So I need to stimulate my motivation for school and such but more importantly I need to let my fire for God grow.

I have found that I often feel like leaving feedback on blogs I read, sometimes disagreements or just comments or whatever and so I shall often end my blogs with a question just to allow people to be able to comment if they wish. Do you think this is a okay decision =P ?

Priorities

By there very definition they should go prior, first, before. But I royally suck. Everything I put ‘first’ in my life I have not been putting first. The things I claim to be my top 3:

family, people, school.

The things that should be at the bottom:

TV, TV, and TV.

Well in the past few days I have spent ridiculous amounts of time watching TV, though thanks to the curse of Hulu, I am able to watch all the amazing shows on my computer whenever I want to. Tonight I just watched the actual television for the first time in awhile because it was a 2-hour premier.

But you know what I should have been doing instead of that? In particular, talking. Chatting with a good friend of mine who now goes to college thousands of miles away was able to talk to me on Skype. (Skype has chats, but also voice and video calls). Now there wasn’t any important issue to talk about, but the fact is that out of their busy schedule they told me ahead of time when they could basically take some time to have a phone call with me. The fact is that I would love to talk to this person, but I let the TV get in the way. Why have I let television shows get before my friends, family, and even God.

Back at Youth Convention in Columbus Ohio I had felt a major readjustment to my life. I had no desire for anything but to love God and to love my neighbors. I finally understood the concept of not having a TV or even internet and being happy. Why do I need TV? Right now it seems to be only a stumbling block. I have no problem with TV itself as it can contain awesome things as well as serve as a social activity, but when it consumes my time and comes prior to the things that are actually important, then it can be a source of sin, something that separates me from God.

This rapid descent into wastefulness of time has been mostly over the past weekish and I have noticeably seen a change in my attitude. I feel less happy and less social. More distanced. I just deleted my bookmark for Hulu, but obviously that will not stop my ‘addiction’, but its a start. I have found that the closer I am to God, the more everything else just falls into place.

I am not saying that I will never watch TV again, but for now I will stop checking daily to see if I have a new video in my queue and will not be checking the NBC schedule for the next episode of Heroes. I will catch back up with the shows that I enjoy once I have set other things back in their place.

America and me

Link: America and me

Sorry ahead of time for my disorganized writing for it is difficult for me to put my thoughts on ‘paper’ when I can hardly think straight.

I am so unsure of political opinions, but I think that I…

Blogs

Psh… blogs. I used to be pretty indifferent to the whole blog thing, but then I got friends. ;) The annoying thing is that there are a bunch of different blogging sites. I recently, and infrequently, used Blogger, and know some people on Wordpress and now I know some people who use Tumblr.

But why does there have to be different ones! I know, there are always different websites, just like Gmail isn’t the only email provider (though it is the best). But with emails it doesn’t really matter, and you might wonder how it could make a difference with blogs, but it does. Instead of individually checking on each persons blogs every once in awhile, when signed up to tumblr or Blogger (probably Wordpress and others too) there is the ability to follow. Which simplifies the matter updating you with other people’s blogs.

I was just going to stay with Blogger especially since I do love Google, but I suppose I will use tumblr due to the persuasion of a person or 2. The setup seems nice, though I think it loads slower then Blogger, so I will see if this ever changes my decision. BUT WAIT!! Blogger allows comments, and tumblr does not… What to this? I could ask you (whoever might read this), but you couldn’t respond on here, you would have to email or Facebook or something me.

Sheesh! I’m long-winded for such a silly matter. OH! and speaking of silly matters: Twitter. Nah, I guess I shouldn’t insult it. It is just a micro-blogging site, but Facebook does a similar thing with the feed posts, but maybe all this is getting in the way of sitting down over some doughnuts and having a conversation about the happenings of daily life. But I defend this accusation with the fact that the  social/blogging sites can help with relationships that are distance challenged.

I don't have a clue what I want to do with my life.

kenleigh:

It’s kind of driving me crazy right now.

But I know that I want to glorify God with my life and career.  Sometimes it is really comforting just to know that he already has it figured out.

I second that! It can be discomforting not knowing where my future may lead after having a clear path for 13 yrs of my life plus at least 4 more for college, but then what? God grants me peace in this storm of confusion and doubt.