The View From Here

Well, Sunday came and went quickly as most days off go. Church was great this morning. The worship was great and the recap of the last few weeks as uplifting as well. I had lunch with my sister and her boyfriend. I tried to avoid my parents by staying out of the house or being in my room doing homework (they are sick). If you think about it, you might pray for them.

I went to the 9:00 service tonight as well. It was very good. I really enjoy singing a cappella. It is beautiful. Afterward I went to my friend’s house and played a board . Always fun.

Have you ever known someone going through a tough time and wish you knew just what to say to them? That’s me. But I have found that sometimes it is better to just be there for them and pray for them. So that is what I will do for you, Chelsea.

A scripture that has really meant a lot to me recently:

Matt. 6:25-34

Please read that scripture. I love it. It really brings things into focus. So many times I find myself worrying about all the little details of my life that I am distracted from the one focus that I should have. This doesn’t mean that we need to ignore our life totally, instead we should use our focus on “the kingdom of God and his righteousness” as the lens by which we see every aspect of our lives. This focus is not something that just comes to us, it is something that we “seek”.

So how do we “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”? Being in His word and prayer all the time and living our lives in conformity with the way Christ lived His life. Everything that we do and experience should go through the filter of His word. I know there is so much more to be said, but it is late. I will probably add to it later.

Brian

“I have found the answer is to love You and be loved by You alone.”

Shane and Shane - The Answer

I love that song. It is one of my favorites, and I just learned how to play it. High five for Brian!!

Anyway, today was a good day. I got to sleep in a bit before I went to work. Work was actually busy. I was kind of suprised. I figured that it would be slow like yesterday, but there were actually quite a few people in the store all day. There were a couple of funny moments from some customers as well. They came in the form of compliments. The first was kind of wierd at first. I was helping a guy with a bench we have in the store and he kept staring at my arms. Pretty wierd. The conversation we had was pretty funny though. It went something like this:

Guy: “Hey, you have nice veins!”

Me: “So about the bench……..”

Yeah, that was pretty wierd/funny/interesting. It’s just not every day that some one tells you that you have nice veins. The other thing came in the form of a lady telling me that I have beautiful eyes. The funny part was that she had no idea that I don’t have “eyes”. Well, it’s funny to me.

I got to spend time with my family and my sisters boyfriend tonight. We watched the Bourne Identity. Good movie. It was nice to have the evening off of work. I am looking forward to tomorrow. I am off tomorrow and I get to go to church. I really enjoy going to church. Well, that’s enough random thoughts for now. Hope everyone has a good night and a wonderful time of worship and spiritual nourishment at church tomorrow.

Brian

Well, today was just that, another day, or so it seems at this point. I did get a good phone call this morning. I found out that my income tax return will be quite sizable. That is good. School was a little bit of a downer. I got a test back that I didn’t do as well as I wanted to do on. But that is ok. We take a test after every chapter, so I have plenty of opportunities to bring it up. My other class was just kind of boring. The tax return info balances out the school.

Work was very slow for a Friday. I don’t think the new Best Buy opening up had quiet the effect we thought it would have. I think everyone went in their front door and left out of the same door totally cutting the rest of the mall out of the loop. So we were slow. So, yeah…….I am not even sure this is worth posting, but I will anyway. I have an idea. Here is a quote that I think is interesting.

“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
— C.S. Lewis

Brian

1 Cor. 9:24-27“Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

Heb 12:1-2

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Since most of us know what it is like to carry a backpack around for school, let’s pretend for a moment that on a particular day of the week we have ten classes back to back with no time in between to switch out our books. We will have to suppose also that there is a backpack big enough to hold all ten of those books. This would mean lugging those books around every day that you had those classes. Pretty hard, but do-able. We might develop some back problems, but that is beside the point. Now, lets pretend that we are long distance runners. Would you wear that backpack to run in a meet? Sounds pretty crazy, but the sad part of it is that there are many believers who do this exact thing. No, not just many, all of us. It is a constant battle to “lay aside every weight and sin”. We come to the starting line every day with so much baggage that it becomes difficult to run the way God wants us to.

We try to deal with things ourselves when all these things do is slow us down. Instead we should start our day with the question, “Is there any weight or sin that I have not given over to the Lord?” I believe that our focus is the key. “Looking to Jesus” Do we wake up every morning and look to Him, or do we become consumed with what happened yesterday, what trials we have to go through today, or feeling hopeless about a sin we are struggling with. Casting our burdens on Him on a daily, hourly, momentary basis is the key to lightening our load so we can “run with endurance”, not focused on the next turn, but on the “founder and perfecter of our faith”, so that we might receive the imperishable reward.

This reward might seem to be enough of an incentive to run with our eyes focused on Christ, but there is another. There is the crowd watching as well. This “cloud of witnesses” is watching the way we are running. Will they see Christ in the way we live our lives?

Brian

“I don’t know what the new Ford will be called. Probably something like the ‘Ford Untamed Wilderness Adventure.’ In the TV commercials, it will be shown splashing through rivers, charging up rocky mountainsides, swinging on vines, diving off cliffs, racing through the surf, and fighting giant sharks hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface — all the daredevil things that cars do in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, where nobody ever drives on an actual world. In fact, the interstate highways in Sport Utility Vehicle Commercial World, having been abandoned by humans, are teeming with deer, squirrels, birds, and other wildlife species that have fled from the forests to avoid being run over by nature-seekers in multi-ton vehicles barreling through the underbrush at 50 miles per hour.”
— Dave Barry

“I hate rap music, which to me sounds like a bunch of angry men shouting, possibly because the person who was supposed to provide them with a melody never showed up.”
— Dave Barry

Dave Barry is a funny guy…

Brian