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Thankful Thursday – Day 142

Yay! It’s Thursday. Thankful Thursday to be precise.

I must say that I am most thankful for my family today. My entire family is pretty amazing. I’m thankful for all their hard work. I’m thankful for the many creative ideas that flow throughout. I’m thankful for the love. I’m thankful for the many and diverse gifts God has given to my siblings and parents. And I’m thankful for the happiness and joy that flows throughout. (Most of the time. ;-P)

What are you thankful for today?

Picture of the Day #142: (Picture from a video shoot)

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Angry or Escape? – Day 141

Peacemaking is something of a lost art. People typically have two responses.

Either they attack and spit ad hominem fallacies all over your face. (Hey, they’re desperate to get their argument out there, pardon them if it involves spittle) <— ad hominem ;-P

Or you have those who just escape and allow the bitterness to build up. I honestly see the escaping and letting the bitterness wall build as being worse. Anyways, we can conclude both are bad.

 But what do we do? We have to make peace. Of course there are times when it is impossible. There are people who will just hate you no matter what you do. Anyways.. As Christians, peacemaking is very important. Does that mean we have to agree on everything? No. But civility and love for one another is.

 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” ~ Matthew 5:9

 Picture of the Day #141:

Some of the images I use are taken by Winslow Robbins. Thanks Winn! www.thewdesigner.com

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Save Yourself – Day 140

The waves slapped his face. He could taste the salt water. And his eyes opened for the last time. The lifejacket was still there. He could still grab it.

BUT NO!

“I can do this myself.” his mind screamed!

And then he went under for the last time.

Are we this way with our sin? Jesus we don’t need you. Get behind me and I’ll do this myself. I can and will save myself.

And just like the drowning man who can save himself, we will drown in our sin.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. ~ John 3:16-17

Picture of the Day #140:

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Friends and Peers – Day 139

Your friends will make you. Or they will break you.

Just remember the people who you hang out with are the people you will become like. Are your times together edifying? Are they built around building each other up? Or are they about tearing others down? Does your time together leave your soul feeling fresh and clean or does your flesh give you a hug?

Of course friendship isn’t about just sitting around in some sort of eggheaded frozen chosen setting where you sit for hours on end discussing theological issues and never joking or having fun with one another. These times of fun can be just as edifying and build the relationship just as much, even though in a different way. But the question is are they?

Are your friendships just about joking and having fun? Of course it’s important to have joy. But pure fun and entertainment is going to be unhealthy. To eat cotton candy all your life would make for a very short life and in the same way having a relationship that consists of cotton candy style conversation would also make for a short and not very deep friendship.

Do you profit from having non-Christian friends? My grandma has said, “If more of them is rubbing off on you than you is rubbing off on them then you should leave.” To paraphrase.

For instance, there are more than a couple of those that I know of who’ve been from fairly conservative Christian backgrounds and then through various means eventually became homosexuals and one of the major elements was the friends they had.

Our friendships should be based around and in Christ. Not because you both like mustard, or love dogs, or you both like biking, etc. Those are additions and help make the friendship. But the foundation to your friendship should be based on Christ. If you have a foundation that’s built on you both loving golf and one of you gets hurt and can no longer golf. Well there goes the friendship.

One of our elders did a wonderful exhortation on friends this Sunday and I’ll post the link whenever it goes online. It was a very good exhortation and convicted me greatly.

In summary, I’m not a very good friend. I discourage. I don’t appreciate people enough. I don’t love my friends as Christ does. I’m not looking to lay down my life in the little things enough. I need to love more. Christ has loved us beyond anything we could ever hope to love. Let’s go out and be good friends. While at the same time making wise choices about the friends you have.

Your friends will make you. Or they will break you.

Love you guys!

Picture of the Day #139: (ha ha at my face ;-P)

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Sunday Quote – Day 138

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. – Winston Churchill

Picture of the Day #138:

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Tired AGAIN?! – Day 137

I’m tired guys. This has been a fun theme to the whole week. ;-P Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday. 🙂

Psalm 37:3-6
Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.Commit your way to the LORD,Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light,And your justice as the noonday.

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Praise – Day 136

Praise ye the Lord. A portion of a verse I just read. We can either be afraid of failure and the worst case scenario. Or we can be the ones who believe in God’s salvation and praise him. I wonder why I still worry more than I rejoice..

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Sleep? – Day 135

Sleep is important. I am in need of it. I am going to bed.

Good night. 🙂

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Addicted? To Blogs?! – Day 134

Oh internet, oftentimes, the bearer of woe. You assist teens in becoming addicted to cycling through hundreds of dumb videos on youtube. You addict men to porn. You “help” everybody to spend countless hours on Facebook, the ideal place for wasting time.  

And you help addict Christians to blogs.

I’m trying to stop reading blogs. I only follow a couple now. At certain choice times, inadvertently my mouse wanders over to the search bar and somehow my keyboard magically takes me to the unedifying atmosphere of pride on the blog sphere. It’s the person who posts about fifteen hundred words per day on random topics mostly involving ovens, it’s the bitter one who’s mad at the whole world, or it might be the kid who posts every day, with bad grammar and is an angel (lol, who am I talking about?!), etc, etc. etc. 

Blarg. 

To sum it all up, blogs are the new way that everybody gets their unhelpful content into everybody’s hearts and minds. If you want to you can find bitterness, hate, lust, and all the things that God hates on the internet.  If there is a desire for bitterness, one can certainly find someone who will agree with them in the blog sphere. Explore the world young padawan.

In all seriousness and love, guys and girls, don’t let the bitterness and hate that infiltrates the internet mess with you.  Resist the temptation to visit a blog that makes you become hot under the collar, or begs an angry, impetuous comment that can float out into anonymity.   There are many bitter angry people on the internet and they’ll say whatever they want to say whether it’s kind, true, loving, or not. Don’t worry, just let them go their way and hope they don’t kill people. God calls us all to account for what we do or say at the end of our lives.  We are not here to call everybody to account, but to redeem the time God has given us for His kingdom.  

What should blogs be about? They should be just like our speech. 

Philippians 4:8 – Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

You want to address hard issues? Address them wisely. Don’t just spout, like most blogs do. (Mine can tend to be that way. ;-P)

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Interesting Story – Day 133

Thanks Katie: @ http://katiegrace7.blogspot.com/ – check it.

Marital roulette
Exclusive: Vox Day advises men to avoid wedding working women

Posted: May 30, 2011
1:00 am Eastern
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=304781

Sunday, May 29, 2011

By Vox Day

There has been an amount of discussion of a marriage strike in recent years as various male and female commentators alike attempt to explain the continuing decline in marriage rates throughout the advanced nations of the West. As more and more men have become aware that women file for most divorces and that family courts are now little more than thieves’ dens designed to funnel financial resources from men to women by any means or legal-sounding excuse necessary, they have understandably become considerably more marriage-averse.

In the last 40 years, the percentage of 25-34 American adults who were married has dropped from 80 percent to 45 percent. In 2009, it was reported that at only 52 percent, the percentage of married adults of all ages was the lowest percentage recorded since the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting marital information 100 years ago.

When one considers the widespread availability of wildly entertaining, time-intensive video games as well as high-quality, high-definition pornography produced to suit even the most esoteric sexual tastes, it is not terribly surprising that American men are becoming ever more disinclined to risk pledging their lives and fortunes to the increasingly adipose, decreasingly reliable creature known as the American woman?

Dr. Helen Smith writes: “Nowadays, for many men, the negatives of marriage for men often outweigh the positives. Therefore, they engage in it less often. Not because they are bad, not because they are perpetual adolescents, but because they have weighed the pros and cons of marriage in a rational manner and found the institution to be lacking for them.”

The problem is that marriage is more than an institution; it is a structural foundation of society. Moreover, marriage is historically proven to be the best means of producing and raising healthy children, which means that it is integral to the continuation of both American society as well as the human race. Without a strong base of healthy marriages between men and women, no society is likely to survive, let alone prosper.

(Column continues below)

So, what is a young man who wishes to be a happy and productive member of society but does not wish to find himself locked into a life of post-divorce serfdom to an ill-tempered, overweight woman with a legal obligation to children who may not even belong to him? Fortunately, the answer is both clear and easily applied. To increase your chances of marital and familial success in life, it is vital to stay away from what are known as “career” or “working” women.

While this will not eliminate all the risks of what has become known as Marriage 2.0, it will return a man’s probability of successful marriage to that of the earlier, more marriage-friendly era. Marriage to a stay-at-home wife rather than one with a full-time job reduces the risk of divorce by nearly one-third. Just the simple act of avoiding romantic involvement with working women is nearly enough on its own to again make marriage a viable option for young men.

Moreover, stay-at-home mothers make for much better mothers as they spend 91 percent more time with their children than working mothers do. The most remarkable observation is that stay-at-home mothers spend 12 more minutes per day on the physical care of their children than working mothers spend with their children in total; the net result of this insufficient attention is that the children of working mothers are 23 percent less likely to pass college entrance exams, 29 percent more likely to be unemployed and are more likely to be overweight by age 11.

Although it may appear to be disturbingly like one, this column is not intended as an indictment of career women or working mothers. The facts are what they are, and my only objective is to point out to men that it is a mistake to conclude the societal changes of the last 40 years have rendered all American women equally unsuited for marriage. No one would dispute that the odds of successfully raising a family with a meth head or crack addict tend to be on the low side, and no one should be upset by the statistically observable fact that men who wish to marry and have children will have a significantly greater probability of success if they choose to marry women who are dedicated to making a career of being a wife and mother.

And that’s my blog, because I’m lazy. I know, I know…