The Lighthouse

Pride, it's a huge stumbling block for a lot of Christians. I would tend to think that is that way because it is a sin that is easy to let creep in. I mean, we are all for self preservation. Why wouldn't thinking that we are good be, well good!

Lately, I have been feeling really close to God, and well, I have to admit I let a little bit of pride slip in with that. Not that I think that this is new. I think I have always had a small seed of it in the back of my head. But, I mean, I'm tons better than all those people who sin a lot, right? ....O wait, I DO sin a lot. Crap, guess that takes me off the "righteous" list.

Over the past weekend I noticed a gap in my relationship with God. It just didn't feel "full strength". I think that was God's way of letting me know about my pride. And it cost me something, as sin often does. It cost me closeness with my amazing God. Which I am starting to believe, is one of the worst punishments we could receive. I can't imagine the feeling of complete separation from God in Hell *shivers*. Anyways that is not always the punishment, but it is one.

Luckily, God showed me my folly, and I'm working on getting that taken care of right now. I now remember that I am not perfect. I will always try to live righteously, but now when I start to think that I am getting better than you. I'll think back to this moment and remember that I am not perfect. I will always be prone to falling down. I just have to remember that I am not holding myself up. But rather, it is my
Savior's love and grace that holds me up and keeps me moving forwards towards His will. I hope I never have to forget that again.

Pride, it's a huge stumbling block for a lot of Christians. I would tend to think that is that way because it is a sin that is easy to let creep in. I mean, we are all for self preservation. Why wouldn't thinking that we are good be, well good!

Lately, I have been feeling really close to God, and well, I have to admit I let a little bit of pride slip in with that. Not that I think that this is new. I think I have always had a small seed of it in the back of my head. But, I mean, I'm tons better than all those people who sin a lot, right? ....O wait, I DO sin a lot. Crap, guess that takes me off the "righteous" list.

Over the past weekend I noticed a gap in my relationship with God. It just didn't feel "full strength". I think that was God's way of letting me know about my pride. And it cost me something, as sin often does. It cost me closeness with my amazing God. Which I am starting to believe, is one of the worst punishments we could receive. I can't imagine the feeling of complete separation from God in Hell *shivers*. Anyways that is not always the punishment, but it is one.

Luckily, God showed me my folly, and I'm working on getting that taken care of right now. I now remember that I am not perfect. I will always try to live righteously, but now when I start to think that I am getting better than you. I'll think back to this moment and remember that I am not perfect. I will always be prone to falling down. I just have to remember that I am not holding myself up. But rather, it is my
Savior's love and grace that holds me up and keeps me moving forwards towards His will. I hope I never have to forget that again.

Personal Devotional times. These words may either remind you of the private time you spend daily with the Lord, or they may stir up a sense of regret because of your lack of them. Or you may not be a Christian and they simply mean nothing to you.

In all honestly I have never been very good at keeping up a time of personal devotions. I mean we live in the 21st century, it's not like we have time to actually, you know, sit around(unless, of course, your sitting around at your computer)! I have done them on and off for the past several years with a, regrettably, blase attitude about them. I would try to do them, but it was half-heartedly. I would rather have been starting on school or reading a book other than the Bible. Then I got sucked into the phrase "It only takes 5 minutes a day!" which for some people it does. But if I'm only going to give God 5 minutes; He must not be very important. I give some people I don't like 5 minutes of my time just to shut them up.

The year 2007 was my first major attempt at keeping a constant devotional time, and it went fairly smoothly. I read the Bible in a little over a year, but it was in an unfamiliar translation and while it helped me grow some. I think I could have went about it better than I did because I was doing the devotional time more in duty to God then to prosper myself in Him.

During 2008 I continued the time to an extent using a devotional book that I had picked up the previous year and I would read random selections of the Bible. My devotional time was primarily at night, and I regret to inform you that most of the time I did not take more then a moment to pray. It got better as I grew in Christ during 2008; the times became longer and I even spent a few evenings praying for 30mins+ when I committed to a prayer journal. But I did not keep them as consistently as I should have, and eventually I stopped with the prayer journal all together. But during the latter half of '08 I did keep a fairly consistant time of reading the Bible to grow in Christ during the evening.

So here I am in 2009. What's changed from '08 you ask? Well a lot more than I'd like to admit :P. During the first week of February I committed to doing a week of media fasting, but I set it up weird so in the end it was more like a laziness fast :P.(Meaning I scheduled things out more-so and allowed for some internet/tv time). During that fast I wanted to connect to the Lord better so I scheduled 3 times of personal devotions.

The first was as soon as I woke up. It tends to take me a few minutes to wake up. So I usually just sit there on the floor in front of my heater for 10mins or so and once I wake up, I pray(tends to last 15 mins or so depending on how well my attention stays, lol.) Then I read a chapter of the Bible. My passages of choice started with Hebrews and I read onto Jude(stopped at Revelation because I did a class on it for school.) And then I also started Exodus(which the first half was awesome, and now I'm onto some harder reading).

The second is right after I finish school because I have noticed my tendency to forsake thinking about that time and just sit on the computer. So I thought this would be a good time to put what I want to do aside and give some time to God. This one tends to be a little shorter, about 20 minutes, but it helps me to remember that God is with me throughout the day and not just when I wake up and go to sleep(For this time I read a chapter from one of my two selections after praying).

The third and last, is right before I go to sleep. As long as I start going to bed by 10:00 or 10:30 this one is easy to keep, but I have to admit that the later it gets in the evening, the harder this one is to keep. But it is a good time to ponder over the day and pray, and then read a chapter before I go to sleep. This is the slot that fluctuates the most on time. It could be anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes.

I have continued to keep these 3 times of devotions over the past several weeks and the blessings have been tremendous. I have never felt so close to God. In fact last weekend I did some small thing out of selfishness and the sense of loss was incredible. Not loss of anything earthly, but I did not feel close to my Heavenly Father, and that was a truly horrible feeling. I hated myself so much for that and it was such a little thing.

I guess the point I am trying to get across is not that I am pious or that God needs you to do devotions for Him. Because as much as He wants you to, you will get little out of it when it's done out of duty. No, you have to want to do it, but when you do, do it and you truly try to hear his voice and follow His commands: The blessings are so much more than you could ever hope for.

It is not always easy, it is not always comfortable, but it is always amazing. And if you aren't a Christian I just want to tell you that you're missing out on one amazing God.

Written by The Lighthouse Admin

"This, is why we're doing this!" As I peered through a little window on the outside of the Auditorium this was the only thought my mind could muster. I saw many people raising their hands in response to the speaker asking how many of them had just accepted Christ. There were dozens in the packed auditorium, many more than I could see. But I was not interested in counting them. I was just prayerful and over-joyed that today I had seen many brothers and sisters enter the kingdom. Not just seen, but been a part of. You see, I was working a local event. I have to admit when I signed up to help, the band that was playing and getting into the event free were far higher up on my list of reasons why I was working that day than the scores that came to Christ. But as I stood there, that was the only thought that mattered. And slowly I realized. My mind doesn't want to just apply this to this event, but also being a Christian!

So often in life we are content to live in our own bubbles and we forget what we have been called to do. I know that I struggle with it sometimes. But our real duty is to make disciples, both within the church and outside of the church. But we are comfortable and don't always live out God's commission for us to be his witnesses...

Acts 1:8(NIV)
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

We need to remember the first place God has called us to be witnesses is Jerusalem. Also read as, where you live, it could be New York, London, San Diego, Miami, Moscow, Tokyo, some small town who no one has ever heard of with 50 people, or somewhere inbetween. But we are first called to be witnesses to the one's around us. If we fail there then why are we spending thousands of dollars taking short term mission trips out of the country? I don't mean to knock short-term mission trips. I know people who have made great impact on them. But why are we continually failing to be witnesses to the people around us and not making an impact on them? The popular opinion of our country is to respect each others view points and not press matters. But I think this philosophy is from Satan. We have the redeemed, the Holy one of God and yet we do not want to share him because it might make someone uncomfortable. Well if they are sinners then they should be uncomfortable for a reason; and if I remember right, we're all sinners.

I want to caution you though. If you go out and try to make disciples and you are doing it for selfish motives or because you feel pressured to. Then that is not right. We are called to do this to bring honor to God because we want to. For He is the only thing worth living for.

So whether your living life on a daily basis, volunteering for something, committing something to God, or whatever else it may be. Remember, bringing glory to God is why we're doing this.

Written by The Lighthouse Admin

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.