Daily Devotionals

Daily Devotionals. Some people may ask, “Well, how far can I go to be Christian and not have to do a lot of work.” There a lot of people that have said this, not out loud, but loud enough for God to hear it (in their thoughts). There are a lot of times that, maybe even we don’t see it where people that get saved by Christ and then know God at least and go to church and do all of the right things on Sundays, but never completely commit to Christ Jesus. Nobody ever wants to take that extra step to stand out and be proud that they love their Lord God! It’s always one step forward, two steps  back with most Christians. They just want the routine and go to heaven and live in peace without having to do any work. I think it was in Acts that it was said by Christ that when these Christians that were following God but not really following Him came up to Him saying that they had done all these things like cast out demons and heal the sick and cherish the poor and yet God turns to them and basically says, “Cool, but I don’t know you.” What He meant by that is that you can go about being a Christian and do good deeds but the biggest focus we should have to have a relationship with Christ Himself! That is the greatest thing we could ever receive besides what He did for us, is have a strong relationship with God. For me, I began to just press into God and spend at least an hour with Him every night just worhsipping Him and praying to Him and also reading my bible! There is nothing better than a relationship with God! He is pure joy and true love and only through Him can we find strength! We can’t do anything alone. That’s why God put a hunger in our hearts to always seek Him out! We will always come back to God, because we need Him! So, I challenge you, that if you do not have a strong relationship with God and you don’t want to be that typical Christian that does all the right things only on Sundays at church service, to just press into God and grow a beautiful relationship with Him and He will me you halfway and you will accomplish many things! God bless!

Every Young Man’s Battle

Every Young Man’s Battle. I recently just received this book in the mail the other day. It had been sent to me by a very special friend of mine that I met at Red Culture’s bible camp last summer. I have been going down to Illinois to visit with them every couple weekends since then and I have grown very close to them and they already consider me family! Getting to the point though, when this book arrived at my doorstep, I had gone up to my room and actually began reading this book. I am generally not the type of guy who just picks up a book and starts reading it. Although I did do that with the New Testament! With this book, I picked it up and didn’t set it down all evening! I was entranced in its teachings and how real this book was. I was and am able to relate to this book completely! I think every young man can relate to this novel! Young men or teens are the general focus of this novel but I think that anybody could read it just as an informative piece of work to understand what exactly teens are going through. This book has an author that comes from the same city that I come from and went to one of my rival schools so instantly I wanted to keep reading because not only did I go through exactly what he went through, but I came from the same background that he came from! This book also gives you a very good insight of what the Bible tells us about sexual impurity and how to go about dealing with it. One of the biggest things that I have taken from this book is that if you want to be completely and utterly sexually pure, then you have to just put your foot down, make a compromise with God that you will, from that day forward, fight to stay constant and pure and sexually moral. Also, to stand tall and just walk with God! That you will follow Him and worship Him for the rest of your life once you accept Him and trust Him with all your heart, body, mind, and soul!

Pan’s Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth. This was a very interestion movie. I had always heard about this movie but I had never seen it before this week. We began watching this film a few days ago in class. I thought, at first, that it was a little difficult to understand since you had to read all of the English subtitles at the very bottom of the screen. That was difficult for me because, for one, I had to look over a lot of people’s heads so that I was able to read them. I ended up just sitting up on top of this bookshelf so that I wouldn’t have to crane my neck just to watch and enjoy this movie. Another reason why I am not really a fan of subtitled movies is because it takes your eye off of the screen. You have to pay more attention to the subtitles and what they are saying rather than actually watching the film. To me, this takes away some of the value of the movie because you are having to depict in your mind what exactly may be going on at that time of the movie rather than just looking at the motion picture and seeing for your own eyes! I mean yes, you are looking right at the screen itself and may be seeing part of the pictures through your peripheral vision but that just doesn’t cut it for me. Anyways, I though this movie was pretty awesome. Being that it is talking about myths and stuff that aren’t real, it did bother me a little just because of my relationship with Christ and Him saying that myths are man-made and that the only thing real here is Christ Jesus Himself. So, in that case it bothered me some but in just the matter of enjoying a movie, I thought it was very well made and the plot of the story was very liquid and flowed smoothly and had some very interesting surprises at random times but never did it actually show you. You had to just know that something was going to happen and then since you were picturing it in your mind, you thoughts sort of put the image in your head by itself rather than showing it in the film. Very well done, I’d say!