The Lighthouse

     Once upon a modern time, there was an Atheist. This Atheist was once a Christian and desired to hear his voice once more. So one day the atheist knelt and did something he hadn't done in many years. He prayed, not a prayer of new life but this: "O God, if you are there show me you are God. Let me hear you."

Several weeks passed after this time and the man went on his annual hike in the mountains alone. When he reached a spot in the mountain roughly halfway up he stopped for a moment to catch his breath watching the beautiful horizon. It was at this time that a great wind began. It howled through the woods below like a wolf in the night. Rocks were riven in two and several rock slides occurred on the mountain. He had to brace himself in a hallow until it died down.

When the wind had subsided. The atheist came out from his hallow and said "Wow, that was truly a great wind." and continued on his hike.

As he continued his hike he came to an impassable portion of the path because the wind had knocked a rock from above below into the path. As he looked out into the horizon he saw a mighty storm approaching, probably pushed in by the wind. He knew that this storm was not something to be trifled with so he went into a cave he had just passed decided to spend the night there. He started a fire and set up supplies inside of the humble cave.

As he was getting into his sleeping bag he heard a faint trickle, followed by a thunderous roar of heaven pouring it's contents to earth. He then knew, this would not be a restful night.

Somehow he managed to get to sleep. And sleep he did. Through the better part of the night. He was awakened by a light. At first he assumed it was the light of dawn, but it was not so.

The storm had produced great cracks of lightning, of which he was surprised he had slept through. They had alighted the forest below. Before him laid a great valley a fire, none like he had ever seen. It was as if the belly of hell laid before him, and it persisted even with the mighty torrent coming from above.

This greatly troubled the man, but as it was, he was safe in his cave and that was all that mattered. So he headed back to his sleeping bag to try and catch a few winks before morning.

When he awoke the torrent was still falling, but the fire had burnt itself out. A great column of smoke rose from the wasteland that was once a forest he had loved dearly. He rekindled the fire in his cave and made himself a meager breakfast from what he had.

Around noon the torrent died down and the wasteland had cooled to a point safe for walking (not without the occasional hidden ember, of course). So the man left his cave and headed down the mount. Once he reached the bottom of the mountain he heard a still small voice calling his name. It was at this time he remembered his plea to God. He had dismissed it short afterward because he felt it was a silly thing he had done in a moment of weakness.

But nevertheless he stopped there and pondered a moment, but decided hastily it could not be him. It sounded nothing like God, it was probably a reporter or fireman checking out the aftermath and calling to his friends.

He then started across the field of ash which lay before him. It was not easy to traverse, but it became easier as he went. Once more he heard the voice, but again he dismissed it.

As he was exiting the field he heard the voice one last time. At this he shouted "God?" But immediately he blushed and felt stupid because he could see reporters across the way looking towards him inquisitively, some even laughing.

At this he stormed to the nearby bus stop and sat down. At this he heard the voice again, but this time it said not only his name, but it asked him this, "Why do you run from me?"

The man humbly replied, "Who said I was running?"

"I did."

"Oh..."

"I am not pleased with you Elijah. You asked for me to speak to you; and then you turn from every sign and voice. I was not in the wind, storm, or fire. But you should have seen me through them. And then the voice, I spoke it not once, not twice, but three times to you. On the third you acknowledged me, but quickly turned away because of your pride. You are a part of an adulterous generation who does not acknowledge me even. You ask for signs, but even when I present them you turn away from them and deny me. It has been said 'Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.' Let it be known. I have let you see me and yet you still have turned away and not believed. What you say?"

The man sat there speechless before God. A word, not even a syllable could he produce off his lips. He sat there as a mute, crying before God in his holy shame. At that very moment, he keeled over dead. For he could not bear to be in the presence of God any longer.

Some say the man accepted Christ at that fateful moment. Others say he had not the chance, but who are we to decide his fate. He is standing before God right now. Let Him decide the fate of this man.

Therefore I declare unto you, let it be known to all the tale of the Atheist on the Mount. For God gave a sign when asked and was ignored. God spoke when asked and was not heard. So be watchful, be listening.

God works in mysterious ways. I'm not going to go into detail, but recently my love and passion for God has increased. I think that is a challenge of our modern day world. We live in such busyness we get caught up in the things of the world, they may not even be bad things, but we lose track of God. We put off small things that show our devotion even. Things like reading His word and prayer. We may even have these things in our life, but we do them in appeasement. We say "God, here is 30mins, let me have the rest of the day for myself." We put off witnessing thinking that the person does not want to be bothered or that we are embarrassed. We do things for God in duty rather than in Love. This has been a challenge in my life, but I think my heart finally understands. I have been striving to honor God, but have been pushing aside the greatest commandment...

Matthew 22:34-38
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:  "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.
(emphasis added by me)

But how often to we give God that much power in our lives. We may try to honor him, but honoring him pales in comparison to truly loving him. When we truly love Him then it will be easier to do His will in our lives, rather than being a struggle.

1 John 5:3
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,

I am in no way perfect. My passion has increased, but I know it will still be a tough road. But I feel like I am on a better road than where I was previously. Care to join me?

Hey, what's up everyone? I'm going to warn you right now: I'm on my second wind so I am really really really hyper...


I'm going to do a weird combo post, this will be a more general life experience post, but I'm also -planning- on it being a sort of devotional.

Ok, so lately I've been on a spiritual low. You probably could tell that by my lack of working here.(don't assume that I'm on a low just because of not working on this in the future though :P). It hasn't been that I've been doing things wrong. It's been more what I've been avoiding doing. I'm not going into depth, but there are things that I've needed to do in my life and have avoided because of laziness. I am slowing trying to get where I don't avoid these things, but I'm not perfect and haven't been moving as fast as I'd like with it. A big part of my laziness is being selfish. I am not overtly selfish, but sometimes an underlying attitude of selfishness is at my core. It's hard to avoid that in America I believe. We think we deserve things. Time for ourselves. A prosperous life. Our general Desires, etc. When we don't deserve any of this and we are very lucky to have what things we have.

Today was an awesome day though, my town has an annual festival and my church decided to have a revival tonight so they had a bunch of youth help with passing fliers out. And on top of that I pledged to help with the transfer of sound equipment for some of our church to sing at the "main stage" :P. So between those two things I was running around from 7:30AM till 4PM serving, but I wasn't doing it with a serving heart. I mean I believe I was still an example on the outside, but my heart wasn't truly devoted to doing it for my God. There was no passion behind it. BTW, this is for a later article maybe, but I love to serve in my church. I think it's a great opportunity when you can serve in your church(in any way, from teaching Sunday school, to stacking chairs, to helping a ministry, to loading sound equipment into a van
:P). And I believe God has called us to help in those areas when we are able.

ok, done with that tangent. Back on track.

So after hanging out with my friends between the festival and the revival we all went to the revival. We had some special music(A dove award winning song-writer) and a special speaker (Richard Coss if you've ever heard of him). Richard has an awesome testimony. He was saved at the age of 25 after being in prison over 30 times. He and his wife were both presidentially pardoned and he lost two grandsons in the Oklahoma city Bombings. So needless to say a lot has happened to him in his life. Tonight he didn't talk about his testimony much though, he focused on one major factor. Living out your faith. I think his sermon really hit me where I needed to be hit.

Richard talked about superstition and religion mixing very well, he particularly mentioned the story of Paul and the Athenians and the unknown God, and Friday the 13th means nothing to us. He then told us a story about a church getting a new PO box number, and the next number in line was 666. How would you like to go into your auditorium and ask for a charity offering sending it to PO box 666 :P.

Richards wife is used to sell condo's for a living so he used that as his next example. He talked about them being superstitious enough that they don't have a 13th floor even because people don't like to stay on it.

He then challenged us to be the Christian that is on the 13th floor where no one else wants to be. Living out our faith on the Balcony on the edge. A lot of us are content to stay on the 2nd, or 5th, maybe we're even close to it on the 12th, but we need to be truly committed and live in the spots where no one else wants to lead, the 13th floor.

There was a lot more to the sermon, but for awhile I've been feeling called to do something more with my life and just talk to friends on the internet, as much as I love you all. I need to do something worth doing. So here you are on The Lighthouse, but as much as this was a step out for me I still need to live out my faith in my personal life.

Going back a little bit. I went to a summer camp and I've felt the call for something more like I said. So I was assuming that meant pastor or youth pastor or something like that which it still may. I do not know. But I think God wants me to start small and work up. Last week at the Art * Music * Justice concert, Sara Groves was talking and there was one line I couldn't shake. She was talking about a ministry she was working with and she was talking about how they would rather you start a ministry on your own than work with theirs. And she said the line "So go out and start a ministry." I mean it fit in, but it stood out, it didn't seem to fit with what she was saying completely. And I feel like maybe it was meant for me. 

Then cut back to tonight, I was sitting there, basically zoning out. Trying to figure out what God wants from me. And then something hit me I could do. It was small, but small is still good. Just a little before, Richard had talked about a McDonald's Manager living out her faith by having Bible Studies and playing Gospel music in her restaurant(I may have to tell that one later :P), but anyways...On Wednesday's we have an hour for dinner at Burger King or else ware. What if I got a group of people who would be willing to fast and put together a Bible study. I don't know how or what I'm doing exactly, but I plan to try. This was inspired because last week I forgot money and didn't eat, but I survived fine :P. And if we have it BK some people might still get to eat something. So if this somehow works out and something happens about it I'll let you guys know.

Last thing I want to say. Richard Coss gave the invitation if anyone wanted to go to the 13th floor and live out their faith, please come up and pray. Well my friend grabbed another friend of mine and went up there. After that I started going and two other of my friends started. So by the time I was up there the whole row of youth was up there praying. It was really awesome, on top of that a lot of others came up after us. Richard was talking and the only thing I remember him saying was this..."Some people will say these youth are the leaders of tomorrw. But they're wrong. They're the leaders of today."

So I challenge you: go up to the 13th floor where no one wants to be and live on the edge for Christ.