I was listening to my zune on shuffle a little bit ago and "The Moment of Truth" by Matthew West came up. I know the song is not particularly about this, but it just made me think back to my "Moment of Truth". Not the moment I accepted Jesus Christ, but the moment when I doubted Him and came back. To me that is a big moment because Satan seduced me with this world and the things in it. Made me doubt the existence of my savior and I am sure broke my Lords heart. But I came back to him. And to me, that moment is the moment that I knew Christ would then on be more than just my God, but the very cornerstone of my life.
I remember it was so tough. God had been a huge part of my life and then one day it was like I lost a part of me. I questioned for about a month and I have to say that it was one of the worst months of my life--if not THE worst. I felt so lost, so confused. In the end I turned back to God because I realized that if all there is to this world is my own self, then living was pretty stupid. May sound like a dumb reason, but that was my conclusion :P. Since then I have continued to grow in Christ so much. I am actually glad that I got my phase of doubting out of the way when I was younger. So many people do not doubt until college and then they are surrounded by the world and Satan sometimes wins much more easily. I can't say that I will never doubt again, but by the grace of God I hope not to.
I am not sure where you are in life, or even if you are a Christian. But I hope that wherever you are in life that you find the hope and love of Christ. He is so faithful and loving even through the storms of life. I don't see how anyone can bear to live without knowing that no matter what happens they will have God to fall back on. He will always be there for us, no matter what :).
 Written by The Lighthouse Admin
Hey guys, sorry for being a tad bit late on this. But I'll give you a bonus week with TWO videos...mainly because I had a hard time picking. But hey, whatever works :P. So here are two awesome videos from Tim Hawkins!
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.
I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and today I finally decided to post it, so.....here it is:
The past few days I've been going through something emotional.
Something I couldn't quite understand or grasp.
I even got a little frustrated a few times because I couldn't understand what exactly these feeling's were or who they were for.
Last night I was in bed staring at the ceiling listening to Danyew's "Beautiful King", I was all mixed up and still frustrated and then suddenly as the song got to the chorus...this amazing, beautiful, wonderful feeling came over me, it felt like....like...I can't even explain it....but I know it was the Lord because only He could make me feel the way I felt in that moment. In that moment I finally understood what the feelings were and who they were for.
I realized just how much in love I am with my Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.
And with these feelings came such a hunger and longing for God that I have never felt before. I feel so incredibly wonderful now and I will never ever forget the feeling I felt that night...I
wish I could explain this feeling to you but alas I have no words to describe it....I just know everything's different.
Lately I've been less distracted with tv, Internet and such things. I'm so focused right now on what the Lord wants me to do for Him that I can barely think of anything else. But I am evening things out, I've learned if you live too much in the past or the future you can't enjoy the present. :) And I intend to enjoy every moment, every person, everyday, every step of the way on this rocky but steady road the Lord has us on, called "life".  Written by Wookiee
You may or may not have heard about an organization by the name of Gospel for Asia. Their founder, K. P. Yohannan, is originally from India and now lives in Texas. They specialize in funding Native Missionaries in Asian countries where it would be hard for a foreigner to adapt to or even come into the country and preach the gospel.
Today's video is a sermon from K.P. in a local church in his area of Texas. I thought it was very good and definitely worth watching. Although it runs a bit long(53minutes if you want to watch it all--but I'd say about 40-45minutes into is all you need to watch to get the core message. The end of the vid is him asking you to sponsor a Native Missionary, so if your interested in that you should definitely keep watching.) Hope you guys enjoy it! Just follow the link below...
http://www.gfa.org/to-live-is-christ
 Posted by The Lighthouse Admin
Hey guys, I couldn't find this weeks video on youtube. So you're going to have to go to nbc's website to watch it. I am for some reason continuing my trend of videos from questionable sources :P. This weeks video is a sketch from Saturday Night Live. Ok, before you freak out: the video is completely clean nothing at all. The video is more economicly inclined and I thought it was really funny. It's actually more in the area of sad funny because if most americans used this principal we wouldn't be where we are today. But alas, we will continue with our trend. Hope you enjoy the video here is the link...
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/dont-buy-stuff/27169/
P.S. if you didn't check out our special edition of the video of the week I would highly encourage you to. It's a video of a 12 year old girl speaking on abortion, and it's quite moving. Thanks, have a great day!
 Posted by The Lighthouse Admin
This special edition of the RVotW is a video of a 12 year old girl giving a speech. Not just any speech, but a speech on abortion. She won a school speech contest with her eloquent presentation of what is wrong with abortion. Whether you agree with her or not I urge you to listen. It is a very well done speech.
Here's a news article on the girl(edited some portions out)...
"Despite facing threats of disqualification, a 12-year-old girl took first place in a speech contest when she eloquently argued for the rights of unborn children – after an offended judge quit.
What made the 12-year-old choose to speak about abortion?
"It was really a family thing," her mother explained on the blog Moral Outcry. "I saw Lou [Engle] speak at a conference several years ago. I came back to my family with the Life Bands, and we all wore them, made our covenant, and prayed the prayer for abortion to end. … We were invited to participate in a 'Life Tape Siege.' Once my kids heard of this invitation, they all agreed: 'We have to do that!' Since then, Lia's passion for seeing abortion end has continued."
Despite Lia's enthusiasm for her topic, her teacher "strongly encouraged" her to select a different one for her class presentation or she would be considered ineligible for an upcoming speech contest.
"[S]everal teachers discouraged her from picking the topic of abortion; she was told it was 'too big,' 'too mature' and 'too controversial,'" her mother wrote. "She was also told that if she went ahead with that topic, she would not be allowed to continue on in the speech competition."
Lia's mother continued, "Initially, I tried helping her find other topics to speak on, but, in the end, she was adamant. She just felt she wanted to continue with the topic of abortion. So she forfeited her chance to compete in order to speak on something she was passionate about."
Lia's teacher was so impressed by the speech that she allowed her student to advance as the winner. Lia presented her speech to judges in front of her entire school on Feb. 10.
The school principal and teachers called Lia's presentation the "obvious winner" – but the judges suddenly disqualified her the following day "because of the topic and her position on abortion," her mother said.
Lia's father later revealed that the judges had a "big disagreement." One was offended by the speech and voluntarily stepped down while the others reversed their earlier decision – declaring her the winner.
Now Lia plans to take her message of life to a regional speech competition, and more than 130,000 visitors have viewed her presentation online."
Link to the original article
 Posted by The Lighthouse Admin
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
Jude is one of those odd books that gets looked over a lot because it is small and a quick read, so it could be easily skimmed and forgotten. Tonight during my personal devotional time I read Jude and I thought it was very interesting. I'm going to post the entire book, but give my thoughts as I go through it...(As I was writing I decided to segment this into two blogs, so look forward to the second half of this devotional within the next week!)
Jude 1:1-4
1Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ: 2Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.
The sin and doom of Godless men
3Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. 4For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
My commentary on these verses:
I think this part is interesting, because what could be a book about the our salvation isn't. Because Jude felt led to write about our faith that was entrusted to us rather than what he wanted to. He then proceeds to talk about how ungodly people have slipped in among us. I personally feel this is a very relevant topic.
(I feel that I sometimes give the church too hard of a time, but please hear me out here.)
In this day and age our culture is very worldly, and I feel that sometimes people slip into churches and think they have it all together, but in the end they do not. They believe in Jesus, but as one verse in the Bible points out; so do demons, and they shudder. They have no hope.
According to the verses above, the ungodly people have used their "faith" Christ as a license to do whatever they wish, some even deny Christ, but they are still among us.
Jude 1:5-11
5Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. 6And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
8In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. 9But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!" 10Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals—these are the very things that destroy them. 11Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion.
My commentary on these verses:
Several interesting points made about beings who reject God. Then God compares those beings to the people among us. So here we can see God's judgment made completely clear. God judges those who use Christianity as a "Get out of Hell free" pass while denying Christ, the same as the sexual immorality of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah--one of the most recognized examples of God's hatred towards sinners in the Bible.
The second half of these verses, I admit, I'm more reluctant to comment on since I am not learned. But I think one interesting point to make about them is the fact that Michael did not say any slander against Satan, who is considered to be basically the manifestation of pure evil in many people's eyes. He just told him "The Lord rebuke you!"
Hope you enjoyed part one! Hoping part two is just as good, but we'll see.  Written by The Lighthouse Admin
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