Diligence

Okay, so I've been worrying so much lately about everything around me. I've been driving myself crazy trying to make things the way I want them to be. Then it dawned on me, I'm lacking in my prayer life. It's not about making things fit into my plan, it's about surrendering to the perfect will of God. Aside from the fact that I'm being selfish in my prayer life, I'm not praying nearly enough. I really need to learn that God answers when we ask. Recently one of my favorite verses has become James 5:16 "Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much."

The second part of that verse kills me in the face every time! "Fervent prayer", that doesn't mean once a week, or even once in the morning for two minutes. That means a constant mindset of prayer(1 Thes 5:17), and when it comes down to it, it's all about surrendering and being diligent in my asking for the Lord to work.

Revolution: the beginning

So there is a movement stirring up. This movement involves seeking Jesus with all that we have, absolutely surrendering, calling upon His name, and having faith that His Holy Spirit is going to do amazing things in our presents. This faith is spreading like a wildfire. I've never seen anything like it, when a room full of 300 jr. highers (all of different churches) are laying hands on each-other praying for each-other's needs. Jesus is indescribably extravagant, more than we could ever know.

Thank you Lord for Your willingness, and Your faithfulness to meet everyone right where they are at. Thank you for an incredible summer. You reign on high.

up stream.

My thoughts, wandering like the blood cells roaming through my veins. Aimlessly thinking, here I am at 1:19am on a sunday morning.

I wish so badly that I could have stronger faith, ah what a beautiful thing it would be to completely surrender to the will of God. Why is this such a task for me? Why does it come so unnaturally to the human nature to let "Jesus take the wheel"? If only I could give all of my cares to the Lord, then I would be sitting pretty. To be in a place where nothing matters because I fully realize that my life is not my own to worry about anyway, that is where I want to be. What a wretched being I am, and yet every time I repent for my sin, God is so gracious that He forgives me every time, not only that, but He forgets it! That is the part that gets me, unlike our human relationships, God won't keep rubbing our faults in our faces even though we deserve it.

It's really comical because in the past 2 weeks things have gone so wrong it's crazy. All within one day of last week things took an unexpected turn. Two thursdays ago my car broke down on the toll lanes on the 91 freeway. I ended up getting towed from the toll lanes to a carrows on green river rd. My insurance only pays for 10 miles of towing, so I got towed from green river road to a pep boys in corona. Then I found out that my Aunt had 100 miles worth of towing so she let me use it to get my car home. So my car is home and my neighbor offers to look at the car, so he does and he figures out that the radiator was the problem, so we got a new one. Everyting was sweet, then Justin(the neighbor) told me that I ought to get the transmission fluid changed. So I did. Backtracking a bit, this past week was "bible blast" at my church, that's like VBS. So I was on my way to Bible blast when my car felt like it was in neutral, so I pulled over and all of the fluid that I had changed was all out of my car and on to the asphalt. It was a crazy time, and it left me wondering... why?

Ezekiel; God strengthens

People have dogs, this is common knowledge. "Man's best friend" as they have come to be known. My parents had a dog when I was born and he was a rottweiler named "Luke". Luke was a really cool dog but unfortunately he developed cancer of the face and had to be put to sleep when I was four years old. For one reason or another I have not been able to own a dog since then. I have wanted a dog for such a long time, I have always been jealous of the kids that could own a puppy at such a young age.

Anyway, in sometime in February I was standing outside of my house when I saw him. He was the cutest little puppy I had ever seen. So I started asking my neighbor about the dog, and he told me all about the little guy, and he said "we might have to get rid of him". I immediately knew that I had to have the dog. So I had been telling my Fiancee Laura all about this puppy until one day she finally got to see him. We got to babysit the puppy one day and that was enough for us to fall in love with him. He he was almost three months old when my neighbor Justin gave him to Laura and I. We started thinking of names and we decided on Ezekiel just because it suited him well. It wasn't until later on that we looked up the name to see what it meant and we found out that it means "God Strengthens", and that is exactly what was happening in that time.

July 4th, 2008-Ezekiel is now 8 months and 4 days old and he weighs 42 pounds.

Who the heck steals meat??

Okay so today around 4:30pm I had just finished eating a meal. I was with my dad and we were driving to my mom's work. We get into the stater brothers parking lot when we see a homeless man on a bike being chased by a stater bro's worker. I started wondering what the heck was going on, then I saw it, meat falling out of the homeless man's shirt. Yes, the homeless man had stole meat from stater brothers.