It's Been Awhile...

I know, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here. I just haven't been in the mood I guess to post... to take the time and do it just doesn't always happen. And it's not like I don't have anything to say. I have tons to say, but just sometimes putting it into words and then you get to deal w/ the fact that it's sometimes just too painful to think about the stuff... I mean, I could just always post just nice stuff... tickle peoples ears and do all that... but that just wouldn't be me.

Lately, a friend of mine and I have been discussing the possibility of starting up a Bible study w/ a few folks. There is a desperate need for it and people have questions. Primarily, I see a lot of youth that need to be challenged and trained up... I'm not sure what's going on w/ local ministries, but it just doesn't seem to be happening (I told you, its not always the pleasant stuff that I get to write about. If your looking for that, you picked the wrong blog to read...) So, as we continue to pray about it and see if its the timing to do something. My heart soo yearns to see people equipped. I get asked questions a lot and I seem to have fairly decent answers, I guess. Hey, i'm just reading the Bible and seeking God's heart. And He just keeps using me... its not that hard.

Just this past Saturday, our church and other local churches came together to do an outreach to the homosexual community down in Charlotte. We called it God Has A Better Way. Our goal was to reach out and resist. To show the homosexual community that we love them as God does, but we don't love the sin that they're living in (the lifestyle). But we understand that they're struggling and we want to be able to help.

One of my big interests is politics. I realized that my life is involved with probably two of the most controversial topics: religion and politics. Not religion OR politics, but religion AND politics. The last couple weeks at church we were having night classes. We called it the School of Cultural Engagement. We had speakers like Dr. John Rankin, Joe Dallas, Dr. Brown, Frank Turek, Joseph Infranco and Pat Mahoney. Each speaker took a different week and spoke on the topics that they were best at. I plan on buying all six weeks because they were just soo meaty and power-packed, so life enriching. I tried to get notes with each week, but I'm not soo good at taking notes. It's not my strong point.

God is doing something in this 'hour' that is just awesome. He is turning the hearts of His children to Him. There is a holy roar that is breaking out and people are getting hungry for the things of the Lord. They realize that government isn't going to solve the problems and that even the church isn't really providing many answers. But God is and Jesus loves them. So luckily, they're turning to Him.

Considerations for the future

I was just reading an article from MSN about how every year the sexual content of our society is hitting younger and younger ages. The article was entitled "Grade-school Logita: 'So Sexy So Soon'. (As a disclaimer, i do want to apologize for the picture on the very front of it. In my putting this on here, I don't want to come across as condoning that type of dress.) But reading through this, I was thinking about how would I handle these types of situations. I mean, lets face it: you can access just about anything now via the internet.

But for myself, I was thinking about how I would handle these types of situations. With my future more than likely dealing with these types of situations, what would I do? Not looking through my 'ministerial' lens and/or 'adult' lens, but coming at it from, lets say, a secular perspective. There are a lot of messed up families out there. And luckily, I grew up in a good Christian home. To this day, i feel pretty comfortable discussing these issues with my parents and family in general. Then again, I feel comfortable addressing these issues with just about anyone really, to a certain degree. I mean, I can't stick my head in the sand about this stuff. Issues like these are things I'm doing to be dealing with. And of course, I'm going to be going to scripture and pointing people to Jesus in those times.

But other than that, what do you do? I've learned that it's amazing what happens when you just listen to folks sometimes. (When you listen to them, they're more prone to listen to what you have to say and then you get to present some awesome Biblical truths.) But aside from that, i'm amazed and somewhat very shocked at the issues i've had to deal with folks in the past. I mean, what do you tell someone who is 13 and they're parents are getting a divorce?

I forget who I was listening to sometime ago, but he made mention of a situation where one of his daughters at home mentioned about how hurt she was that something happened to her. He said that at first, he was just going to quote a scripture verse to her. But then, he felt prompted to just say "honey, I hurt when you hurt." it was at this time that his daughter came over and gave him a great big hug! Instead of him just throwing out some rhetoric, he first sympathized what what she was going through. But how often do I actually listen to folks and take in what they're saying?

Just reading through this article gave me things to pray through and really get into the scriptures about and really think and ask how would Jesus have responded to this type of stuff? I mean, the things mentioned in this article simply are expressing human emotions and things that people deal with. Unfortunately, its at such a young age.