Category: Uncategorized

I went down the Amazon River earlier this year. And one thing that I really came to grips with was the fact that God is both great as well as beautiful in his works.

We spend a lot of time speaking about the greatness of God and his judgment. I don’t know that we always spend enough time as Christians observing the beauty of his creation. In the power of a storm there is a beauty. When we look up and admire Pikes Peak we see both beauty and glory.

Psalm 29:2 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

As we observe the beauty that God has created we should give glory to him through our words and actions. We should also observe holiness as beauty. Sin can never be seen as beautiful no matter how much hollywood tries to make it look beautiful. It’s as if they dress a pig up in millions of dollars worth in jewelry where at some point it’s hard to see the pig. But, it’s still a pig under all the jewelry. So remember that holiness is a true beauty.

Psalm 96:6 Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

God is truly magnificent. His sanctuary has strength and beauty to it. Both strength and beauty are part of God’s sanctuary. As young men, we can tend to put much of our emphasis on how strong we are but are sloppy in other areas of our lives. I think beauty also has value. We need to have beauty of spirit. A man who has a strong will, but dresses sloppily and who does not keep his house organized and beautiful can be failing in this aspect.

Psalm 90:17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

I don’t believe we focus enough on the aspect of beauty as Christians. Christians are well known for doing things badly. Their films are disgustingly put together. They don’t put work into their projects. (They wear sandals with socks. – pet peeve ;-P) They don’t show the beauty of the Lord because they are lukewarm. They aren’t taking the beauty of the Lord and putting it into their work. Instead they are inconsistent and do everything in a mediocre manner. As Christians we should be the ones designing new technology and creating better art forms because we have hope. We should believe in a generational vision. If we care about our children, grandchildren, great great grandchildren etc then we will take dominion over the earth and will do it well and with a passion.

Ecclesiastes 3:10-11 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

God is the ultimate creator of creativity. Everything on this earth he’s designed in such incredible ways. The ways our bodies function and think, the way fire burns logs and creates heat. Remember George Washington Carver spent much of his life researching the peanut and found 300 uses for it in our daily lives. It’s amazing how just a tiny creation of God like this would have so many uses. That’s just one plant of millions of plants that God has created. There’s a lot more work to be done.

Psalm 48:2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

And someday at the end of our work here we’re going to go see mount Zion. The city of our King. It’s going to be an incredible day when we get to see this city that’s called the joy of the whole earth.

But right now we need to take dominion and create beautiful things and marvel at the beautiful things our creator has made.

Picture of the day:

I could put these on another post, but I don’t want to post two posts. 😛

It comes down to the fact that many young men aren’t ready to be married. Yes, young men exist and there are actually more males then females in the United States. So where are these elusive men?

Well for one there aren’t many men. There’s a bunch of males. They in theory have the body parts of a male but they don’t act the part. They’re a bunch of children. According to a Newsweek article less then a third of guys are growing up by 30 years old. (Growing up = leaving home, getting an education, finding a partner(wife..), starting work and becoming a father)

As a Christian young man I see the serious temptation to not grow up. I recently read a paper by someone on how teenagers (15-17) spend their time and boys typically spend about 85 minutes a day working and about 500 minutes a day with free time.

After looking at this I wonder why we’re complaining about boys not being grown up. It’s kind of a duh factor. If you’re spending 5x the amount of time goofing off then time working you think a man is going to be ready or even want to get married by the time he’s 22?

But we’re homeschoolers! We spend our time studying geography and staring at math books all day. We’re with our parents so the boys must be much better then the average.. Ha ha, I think not. Most of the time, when I converse with a boy between the ages of 15-20 they say they do school and after school, well they really don’t do anything. o.0 Really? School should take you about 3-4 hours a day and the rest of the day you do nothing? The problem is these young men aren’t being raised to work.

Guess what. If you’re raised by women it’s going to be harder to become a man. And from what I see, in two parent households, the moms are raising the children and the men are doing… Umm. To be honest I don’t really know. I figure most men have about 55-60 free hours per week if they work a 50 hour week. That seems like more then enough time to spend with their boys raising them and training them up. I’m blaming the men. I think it’s time to point fingers. (Yay!) Fathers need to look themselves in the eyes and ask if they’re raising their boys to be men. Both parents have a role in their children’s lives and I don’t see the men holding up their end of the bargain.

Now to the boys. Of course I’m speaking this while attempting to drag the log out of my own eye, but here are my basic thoughts. Number one, guys get a vision. If you have no vision for life you’re going to fail. You need goals for now and fifty years from now. Otherwise you’re going to spin your wheels and be one of those 30 somethings who aren’t grown up. Number two, stop buying the load of #%#@% that the world sends your way. They want you to think that a life with children, a job, a wife, a house, etc. is a bad thing. Maybe it is hard, but that doesn’t give you a reason to act like a child and hide from responsibility. Plus it’s going to be so much more rewarding. Number three, learn to sacrifice. Sacrifice is so difficult especially in our culture that’s taught us that it’s all about us and the newest toy. Number four, get busy. If it’s video games or computer time (except reading my blog of course. 😉 ) or television that’s getting in your way of being busy consider throwing it out of your life for awhile. Sometimes these are the lions in our lives and need to be killed. Lastly, grow up. Read good books. I’m starting to get sick of talking to girls who have read a ton of great books and talking to boys incl. myself who don’t read very many, if any good books.

To solve problems we have to do things differently. “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Everyone’s going to have to sacrifice their flesh in order to see change.

P.S. To be honest I feel pretty naive in this area, but I took my best shot at it. I appreciate others input.

Tomorrow: Beauty and Strength

I’ve been thinking over this lately, partially because no matter where I go it seems someone’s always talking about marriage and how to get their kids married. Which is a legitimate concern because I look around and I see a lot of unmarried young ladies who are already beautiful cornerstones yet there is no man there for them. In the circles that I’ve grown up in many parents and children decide not to go down the college route of sending their kids off to be educated by the world. Which I agree with, except, well I’ll leave this till a later time…

Anyways, many couples come together in college. It makes sense, you meet a bunch of people of the opposite sex of about the same age, you’re both being educated the same way, you spend some concerted time with them, and typically it’s going to eventually happen.

So these parents are having their girls stay home and it in theory makes sense. If you want to be a good mother/help meet generally the home’s going to be the best place to learn to be the best at it.

Now here’s where the problem begins to happen. These young ladies are staying home and then the boys go to college. Wait, what… If this is all going to work there are going to have to be guys to marry.. <_< This system is fundamentally messed up. It’s going to come down to having to have your children in a pool of other young people. Number one, of course it should be a pool that you’re comfortable with your girls or boys getting married in. And number two there NEEDS TO BE A POOL!!! Just sayin’. In the end I don’t think there’s going to be one solution that’s going to automatically mean marriage. But there are things that one can and should do. And I think there’s another major problem and that’s the maturity of the young men. But I’ll post that tomorrow. ^_^ Tomorrow: Maturity And I’m also going to start a daily picture at the end or beginning of my blog posts. I’m going to try to take at least one picture each day, but I didn’t get a chance today so here’s a good one to premise my topic of maturity tomorrow.

Sometimes all that needs to be said is “I love you.”

Okay, little rant because I can’t think of something more helpful/creative at the moment.

PICK UP YOUR TRASH!!!

Okay I’m done. *angel*

I go out once every month or so and pull trash out of the side of the roads near our house. And there is so much trash that people throw in there every month. Sure, I understand a banana peel because you’re feeding the ants. But soda cans, fast food wrappers, beer bottles/cans, and cigarette packages seem to be the most common with the occasional tennis shoe thrown in. *Who throws out one tennis shoe?* Must be some one legged man… A bunch of them…

Part of taking dominion of the earth is about caring for it. It’s not about traipsing through a jungle and cutting down everything in sight. Sure, of course part of taking dominion is taking care of the land and making it produce for us. Not letting the forest rule us like a lot of nutty enviros.

But there’s something to preserving the land that God has given us and not littering it with a bunch of garbage.

Signed,
Daniel – an angry trash picker upper.

I oftentimes wonder if people are being real with me. Okay I’m a skeptic. But how can I trust that this salesman is telling me the truth about this product? How do I know it’ll last 3 years and not 1 year and a day (just to be sure it’s not covered by the warranty.) How do I know that this person who says they care about me isn’t lying and just trying to score brownie points with me.

But then I look at myself and see that I don’t want to be real either. Do I want to open myself up to most likely get hurt in the end? Do I want to show people who I really am? The sinner who doesn’t do things perfectly and fowls up more then anyone would ever want to admit? How about if I say something and then everyone despises me? I look at the world around me and see cruelty and unkindness. I see people constantly talking behind their “friend’s” back. Why would I want to open myself up?

But can you really ever be close to someone if you don’t every truly know them? Will someone ever be able to help you, pray for you, cry with you, and love you if they don’t know the real you? Do you want a friend who doesn’t even know and love the real you?

I want to meet the person I’m talking to. But then I wonder if I’d like people if they were being totally real. Maybe they would shoot me if I met the real them.

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.

On the other hand we shouldn’t be sharing things that are evil. There are two sides to being real. If you utter gross and unhelpful things all the time and excuse it by saying, “well it’s the real me, so people should suck it up and just know this is me.” Well number one, there should be repentance there. We should be one to speak the truth and say what we’re thinking but do it in the way that Philippians 4:8 directs. Of course a true friend will hopefully see that what you are sharing is evil and will lovingly reprove you. But we should never excuse the evil we think and utter by saying it’s who we are.

To make this brief, let’s go out and be real and not be offended easily when others do and say stupid or hurtful things. Our friendships will grow so much more and if Christ is the center of the friendship it will blossom.

It seems that whenever someone bursts out in song they’re happy. You generally don’t see someone angry singing. So when you feel down, sing!

Proverbs 25:11 – A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.

Do we really consider what we say? I think much of what we say will be forgotten. On Facebook and Twitter I oftentimes see many quotes from great men of the past. These are those words that were fitly spoken. They’re those words that are worth framing up and putting around our house.

Our conversations will most likely prosper if we spend the time to formulate our words rightly and speak those words that will encourage and lift up.

An interesting thought hit me today. I was reading several blog pieces by people who were probably in their 20s to 40s about how they got saved again. They thought they were saved before, but then figured out they weren’t really saved. If I was paid a dollar for every time I heard that I’d be worth about thirty bucks.

As a young Christian you need to be fed milk. You aren’t able to handle the meat of the Word. 1 Corinthians 3:2 – I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

So, are these people who keep on getting saved over and over again really growing in faith? I question some of the messages that ask you to question your faith (maybe not directly, but hints of it). Should I be doubting the grace of Christ in His salvation of me? Am I really going to grow this way? Or is my Christian walk going to be reduced to wondering if I’m saved over and over again? Asking myself am I on the right road, am I on the right road? And I’ll end up not ever starting down the road.

Sure, I can see a point to looking at the Word of God and then looking at your life and if they don’t match up changing things and repenting of your sins.

But, when we’re laying on our death bed are we going to be biting our nails not knowing if we’re saved or not? Not knowing if our last salvation took? I hope not.

Sometimes the best thing you can say is goodbye. Just as Christ left us, so must we do to our friends.

Wait, what?

😀