Random Thoughts

Faith To Overcome Doubt

2009-02-15T21:07:00.006-05:00

In the past, my Christian life has gone in cycles of highs and lows. Sometimes the lows will last a few weeks like when I start to feel overwhelmed with work and don't seem to make the time to spend time in the Word. One time the low point lasted several years when I thought that I knew what was best for my life.

If this happens to me, surely it has to happen to other believers as well...Right? And if so, what can we do to prevent it in the future?

I finally found the answer in James 1:2-8.

2 - Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
3 - because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
4 - Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
5 - If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.
6 - But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
7 - That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord;
8 - he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

As Christians, we all are going to go through times when our faith is tested. However, God will never give us something that we aren't able to overcome if we stand strong in our faith. ( I Corinthians 10:13 ). When our faith is tested and it withstands the test, we grow stronger in our faith ( v3-4).

However, when our doubts overwhelm our faith the problems begin. The times when we ask God for strength but do not believe that He can carry us through, that is when we become "blown and tossed in the wind." Our doubting of the power of God prevents our faith from growing. To make matters worse, our doubts also prevent us from receiving the blessings that He wants to give us.

My memory verse for the week will be I Peter 5:6-7

6 - Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
7 - casting all you anxiety on Him, because he cares for you.

The newest member of our family

2009-02-09T11:11:00.002-05:00

Our house now contains 2 adults, 3 children, a dog and Kiki, the cat. Unfortunately, sometime in the past 7 years I have developed an allergy to felines. Only time will tell if she becomes a permanent member.

The Shepherd

2009-02-07T11:30:00.003-05:00

My wife and I teach the younger kids ( Kindergarten -> 5th grade ) on Wednesday nights at our Church. This past week we taught about 'Worry' and the focal passage was Psalms 23:4. The following is the story that I wrote to help the kids understand the role of a shepherd and his sheep.

The day was warm and sunny. The shepherd had led his flock of sheep to a small valley next to a stream and a small hill. The place was perfect; the shepherd was able to sit and relax in the warm sun on this hill while the sheep ate and played below.

Occasionally, one of the sheep would wander a little away from the others and the shepherd would have to pick up his rod and staff and walk down into the valley to urge the sheep back to the rest of the group. Sometimes the sheep wanted to be playful and try to run away, but the shepherd was patient and used his staff to guide the sheep back to where it should go because he knew the grass was better near the river and the sheep could have all they wanted to drink.

Unfortunately, since the area was such a nice place to relax and drink, the wolves in the area knew that they could sometimes sneak up another animals and get a quick dinner. It just so happened that there were two wolves that wandered by this day. Seeing the flock of sheep, they approached as close as possible without making a sound. Suddenly, they charged into the sheep scattering them in all directions.

Choosing a single sheep from the group, they started chasing it up the hill, but they did not expect to run into the shepherd.

The shepherd had seen the wolves approaching and had headed down to the valley. The wolves were so focused on capturing the lamb, the never saw the big human swinging at them with his weapons – the rod and staff. Both wolves were wounded and ran away, leaving the lamb with his protector.

Busy Day

2009-02-04T21:55:00.003-05:00

Wednesday is always a busy day for me that does not leave a lot of extra time for writing a post for the blog. Instead, I thought I'd share a video that I found on Tangle.com ( formerly know as GodTube.com )

The boy is calling a Christian Radio station and it is interesting to note that the caller is only 13 years old.

Five Observations

2009-02-03T21:28:00.003-05:00

These are five observations that I want to share. [Shameless plug: if you are one of the few readers that enjoy my blog, please share the link with others.] This is based on something that I learned at the "Temptation Island" conference this past weekend ( see previous post below for more details ).

Divorce: America has seen in increase in the number of marriages that end in divorce. According to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce. America has the highest number of divorces based on population than any other country. Puerto Rico, Russia, United Kingdom and Denmark round out the top five.

Rise in welfare: I'm all for a state that is willing to take care of its population. Everyone will eventually go through a bad spot and need some assistance. However, I do have a problem when there is little to no oversight on the money that is distributed or for a system that allows a person to profit off of it. All too often a person realizes they can get money without earning it and then they continue to do so because it is easier than working.

Pleasure comes first: Where is the nation that was built on the principal of "Seek ye first the kingdom of God"? Magazines and television have become increasingly morally permissive to what is acceptable. Magazines that would never have been published in the 50s can be found openly in magazine stands and television programming that would have been banned back then is becoming easier to access. To top it off is the rise of the internet -- an information outlet that is relatively free and is completely devoid of all censorship unless people are willing to censor themselves.

Military Power: The US army is the largest standing army in the world and is by far the most well equipped and populace of this great nation is taxed to provide the money needed for our army. Please don't misunderstand me though, I completely support anyone that wishes to serve our country. I am a very patriotic person and I firmly believe that our nation could, with God's help, return to the great nation it once was. However, how much sense does it make to build our army but not build our hospitals or schools in the same proportion.

Decay of Religion: Taking prayer out of our schools, removing the 10 Commandments from government buildings...these are just some of the things that have happened during my lifetime. What good has become of it? An increase in crime. An increase in abortions. A decline of family values. Christianity is openly attacked in the media. Churches that focus on personal-prosperity above the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why are people unwilling to accept that there is a purpose for their life?

Sorry...I meant for this to be a simple post but more feelings that I expected came out. I'll leave you with just a few more thoughts and you'll understand the purpose for this post:

More than 200 years ago in 1787, Edward Gibbon wrote a book called Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For years he studied the Roman empire trying to find out how a nation or an empire could be so great and then suddenly collapse. These are the five reasons he identified:

First: Rapid increase of divorce.

Second: Higher and higher taxes; the spending of money for bread and celebrations. [Scott's Note: Bread and celebrations was the roman version of welfare or at least the way the government kept the citizens complacent while the empire crumbled around them.]

Third: The mad craze for pleasure.

Fourth: The building of gigantic armaments, when the real enemy was within.

Fifth: The decay of religion.

Temptation Island

2009-02-02T10:26:00.003-05:00

No...I'm not talking about a reality TV show from a few years ago. This was a men's conference at First Baptist Church of Woodstock (no... I'm not taking about the hippy-fest either) this past weekend. The theme was, of course, Temptation Island and focused on the passages from James that deal with trials and temptations. I got enough notes from this conference for about a week worth of blogs, so I won't go into too much more detail about the subject matter until tomorrow.

I had the opportunity to attend this year and it was well worth the $45 dollars. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I really wanted to attend at all mainly because I'm somewhat of a private person and have trouble opening up and sharing especially with other men. I'd been considering going, but hadn't made the decision yet until my pastor approached me at Wednesday night dinner. His simple request, "You are going to the conference at Woodstock" was either a rhetorical question or a statement and at that point I knew that I was meant to go.

It was a two day conference, about 6 hours on Friday night and 5 hours Saturday morning. Friday night started off with a Steak Dinner for everyone that signed up. I forgot to mention that about 6,000 men signed up that night -- that's a lot of steak! After dinner we moved into the worship center for the main attraction. Their praise team and sound system was amazing and the speaker, Rev. Johnny Hunt, was even more so. After the main message, I attended a breakout session entitled "The spirit is willing...". I left that night too excited to sleep.

Saturday was similar, except we skipped the first breakout session to go to breakfast as a group. Pancakes and bacon -- yum!. We followed this up with two more sessions with Rev. Hunt. This weekend was definitely a revival time for me.

I hope you'll check this blog every few days as I share some things I learned at the conference.

Short Story: Lucius Satanas: Hotel-Owner Extraordinaire

2009-01-19T22:41:00.000-05:00

I wish I could have written this story. Even though it is very short, it does not miss the mark. Do yourself a favor and take 5 minutes to check it out.

Your worship...

2009-01-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

"Your worship will be accepted, when your worship is acceptable." This was one of the points of our pastor's message this evening when he was preaching out of Hebrews 11 with some Genesis thrown in for flavor. To me, and with the additional information he gave us, that sentence is something everyone should think about.
To truly understand the sentence, one must first define "Worship". The pastor gave examples of people that might believe that worship is singing songs. Others may believe that if they show up to Church on Sunday Morning for an hour, they have met their quota of worship for the week. These are becoming worldly understandings of worship. However, the Bible directly states what worship truly is:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. (Rom 12:1)

What I get from this is that God is asking for total devotion to him. Not just a prayer here and there and attending Church when we see fit, but total commitment of mind, body and spirit to Him. With this passage in mind, the subject of this entry means so much more.
To give an additional frame of reference, I should bring up the story of Cain and Able. As most of you know, Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, murdered his younger brother, Able. However, the portion of the story that relates to this entry occurs a bit earlier in the text. Both brothers prepared a sacrifice for God. Cain, the farmer, brought items from the fields to God and Able, the herder, brought the finest of the herd as a sacrifice. The important difference, though it is not directly stated, is that Able gave to God the best of what he had to offer and Cain probably gave what he thought was adequate, but the Bible does not indicate it was the best of the crop. God found Able's sacrifice acceptable, but Cain's was not. I wonder how different the story would have been in Cain had brought the best of the first harvest before God? Or to put it a different way, Would his act of Worship have been accepted once he had made it acceptable?

Paintball

2009-01-17T20:53:00.000-05:00

Today ... is a day ... that will live in infamy. At least, as I remember it. Today, I got my first taste of a sport called "Paintball". Driving out to the fields at Old South Paintball I had images of scenes from A Band Of Brothers running through my mind: A small group of people moving quietly through the forest trying to take out the enemy. Granted, I was slightly concerned that I was going to walk off the field covered with black and blue welts from being pepper with paintballs, but as someone once said: "No guts, no glory".

All I can say is that I was not disappointed.

I advanced up the middle with two other people, while two other teams were trying to overcome opponents on each side in order to complete a flanking maneuver. We held the middle even though barrage after barrage of paint balls were flying around us. The team to the left was having similar results. Both sides lost a few men and by then both sides had dug in for a long assault. The team to my right got a superior position on their opponents and quickly finished them off and rolled around to the center and took out the people that were shooting at my group. All was going to plan, with only one more group to take out. Unfortunately, that group was made of veteran players who were not going down without a big fight. In an attempt to move to a superior position, I started taking fire and caught one in the head. Game over for me; as a good sportsman should, I raised my hands and walked off the field. The players that remained carried the day and our team was the last to walk off the field.

4 more games in the woods were followed by a couple of speedball games. All in all, it was a terrific day and I did not take any shots that left bruises. I'm sure it's just a matter of time, though.

The Protectorate

2009-01-15T23:08:00.000-05:00

The following is a short story I wrote a few years ago for a contest. Not having anything better to post today, I thought I'd share this.

The Protectorate

I knew it was going to be a bad jump when I was collecting my gear this morning. Any member would be eager to volunteer to a jump back to Arizona in 2004, but the sad look in the jumpmaster's one good eye made me reconsider volunteering. Being the senior member of the team doesn’t always mean that I get the easy jumps, sometimes I get the bad cases as well…and this was one of those times, most likely a removal mission.

I grabbed my gear bag and approached the jumpmaster. “Tough one today?”

“Yep, this one is going to be rough. The assignment is really tough,” he flips through a stack of papers and hands me the package I need, “but the landing zone is worse. Take care when you enter realspace. You can wait in the jumpbay until it is your turn.”

“Thanks. I’ll bring you a souvenir if possible.“

The long walk to the bay gives me plenty of time for reflection…today my thoughts turn to why I chose this job. It takes a special person to volunteer for this type of work, some say we are not entirely sane for choosing this profession…sometimes I have to agree. It’s been 20 years since the nuclear war and only 10 years since the quantum-time mainframe came online. In that time, it has detected a large reversal of the prior events due to our successful jumps. Each jump into the past has managed to realign the future so that billions of people do not have to die in the war. Each time I jump, I wonder if this could be the last jump anyone has to make. No one really knows for sure…we all assume the mainframe will tell us when we have changed the past enough to affect the future.

I wonder if we will just cease to exist at that moment, or if we will spend the rest of our natural lives in the “bubble”. No one told me that once I entered the bubble I could never leave. It makes sense though - our actions in the past change the future and the egg-heads believe that if someone left the bubble, the damage they would do to the so called “space-time” continuum would unravel the fabric of reality. Yeah...Right. I think they just have a hard time finding volunteers.

Unlike the jumpmaster’s area, the ‘bay was a model of efficiency. The techs had their job down to a science, so much so there was no need for conversation. I handed my jump orders to the tech that was to escort me inside my cube. Once inside, I changed into the clothing that had been selected for me; shorts, boots, a t-shirt, and 100 feet of climbing rope. I sat in the chair and waited until the jump computers were able to lock onto the correct target. As the red light switched from red to green, I prepared myself for the jolt that always accompanies the jump. Not quite an electric shock, it’s more like leaving my body and then jumping back in.

My years of experience were what saved me. I never thought the jump would leave me on the peak of a mountain. My first instinct was to step forward, as most jumpers do when moving through time, but had I done that I would have landed hundreds of feet below. I took a moment to look around and realized that I had been here before as a young man, when the air was safe to breath and I still had time for rock climbing.

One of the rules of the jump was that we could not open our orders until we entered realspace on the other side. That way, we did not know if we were going to save someone or “remove” them. Finding a safe place to sit, I cut the orders open and let the contents slide into my hands. Some people rush to see what and who they are to handle, I prefer to savor the moment. I take my time to read the report first and only then will I study the picture of my target. This time, my target is a 20-something male that loves rock climbing. According to his report, he will come into contact with a female in the future who will participate in actually starting the war by urging the president to launch our arsenal before it was too late. The mainframe believes that there is a 95% probability that his removal would change this woman’s fate enough that she will not influence the president.

“Well, I guess that settles it…I’m on a removal mission”. As much as I hate removal missions, I know that I have no choice but to proceed. The mainframe will not detect the change in the timeflow if I fail. If the change is not detected, then it will not issue the order to have me recalled to the “bubble”, and I would quickly die within a day here in the past. The scientist have not been able to explain why, but jumpers never lasted long in the past…that is why we are sent to a very specific time and place. No one wants to waste time looking for their target.

I return the report to the envelope and slowly remove the picture of my target. I never expected to find a picture of myself. Can I really kill my past-self to protect the future? If not, I’ll just die here anyway. If I do kill my past-self, will I return to the future? If I don’t kill my past-self, will I get stuck in some type of time-loop and always return to this point? According to the scientists, we are always safe inside the bubble…but they never mentioned what might happen to us in the past. I decide to sit here and stare at clouds until my past-self appears…then I will make my choice.

Book:Wrath of a Mad God

2009-01-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

I really hate it when I find a book I just can't put down. I finished this novel around 2am this morning and it was worth staying up. I discovered REF's ( Raymond Elias Feist) novels when I was in High School and have been eagerly awaiting each successive one since then. I was afraid the series may be getting a little stale after so many years but he did not disappoint me. If you like Tolkein or Modesitt, then you should do yourself a favor and pick up his first novel, Magician ( in the hardback ) or Magician:Apprentice ( in the paperback ).

Another cool fact about Feist, is that he regularly reads and participates in an internet mailing list. "So What, most authors have an online forum now." you may be thinking....Well, REF was doing it back in 1996 when the internet was just catching on. He may not reply to every email, but he does stay active in the list.

Book: On Writing...

2009-01-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

I just finished "On Writing...a memoir of the craft" by Stephen King and found it to be an excellent book on how to write a novel. Let me preface the rest of this post by saying I'm not a huge King fan. I've read the 4 short stories he wrote a Richard Bachman, the Stand and have tried to get into the Dark Tower series without much success. After finishing this book, I think I may have to check out some of his other novels. The first portion of the book is autobiographical -- he attempts to cover some of the points in his life that he feels turned him into the author that he is today. The second half of the book contains tips and advice for the aspiring writer.

For a long time I've wanted to write a novel and have it published. To begin, I've read a few other books that on writing. These other books always go through the steps of how to put together your characters, research the topic, and plot the scenes. The end result is to end up with a package of data and a storyboard before beginning to write a novel. While this sounds like a good process ( and I'm sure it has worked for a lot of people) , I think it takes some of the mystique and art out of writing.

King, on the other hand, approaches it as an art form. His method of writing is to come up with an idea and a beginning and then let his conscious ( or subconscious ) flow from there, often resulting in a novel that ends up in a place completely different from where he thought it might. That sounds more like an artist taking a small spark of inspiration and ending up with a work of art. Personally, I can identify with King's process more.

The Frozen Tundra

2008-12-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

Somehow we picked the week of the first snow to travel to Kansas for a business trip and it has stayed white and cold the whole time. The flight was interesting and a bit bumpy so I'm glad to be on the ground. Andy, the person I'm traveling with, worked some magic at Avis and got us a sweet rate on a Hummer H3.

I have to say that I'm a bit surprised about the staff on McConnell AFB. Some of the airmen are really organized and others, well, let's just hope they are not the last line of defense for this country. All in all, it has been an good trip so far, but I'm ready to return to the warmer climate of Atlanta.

One ticket to Kansas

2008-12-16T08:38:00.001-05:00

I'm headed to the wonderful ( and apparently windy ) state of Kansas for a business trip. Normally, I hate business trips but I've never been to Kansas before AND I even get to visit McConnell AFB. I doubt I'll be able to talk anyone into giving me a ride in one of the fighter jets, but it never hurts to ask.

The Magic of Recluce

2008-12-15T15:25:00.000-05:00

Wonderful book! I don't consider myself to be a fantasy-snob or believe that Tolkien is the epitome of epic fantasy -- I just know what I like to read. I was in the bookstore this past weekend looking for a book cover that might catch my eye ( I know, can't always judge a book by its cover but I've found that in a lot of cases good art goes hand-in-hand with a good novel) when I saw someone else looking though the novels written by Raymond E. Feist, who is one of my favorite authors. I started a conversation with him because I thought he wasn't sure which book to start with, but it turns out he was a long time Feist fan as well. We parted ways with him recommending the "Recluce" series of books by Modesitt.
It's been a while since I've gotten a book that is hard to put down, but this was one of them. I can't wait to get the next book in the series if this book is any indication of his ability to craft a novel.

Four Tickets to Christmas

2008-12-15T11:39:00.000-05:00

Over the past 3 weeks, I found out that I missed out on some really fun times while in school. Our Church just finished its final performance of "Four Tickets to Christmas" and it was a great play and I had a ton of fun being a part of it. I have never been one to want to watch a play, read a play ( well, I blame not wanting to read a play on my 6th grade english teacher -- I swear that she hated me ) or even be involved with a play...now I wish I had realized how much fun they are years ago.

Even though I was only the sound-guy and did not have any time on the stage, it was tremendous fun to be involved in a large group project.