"That Meant Everything"

Hey Everybody! Look- I'm back again before six months ;) But anyways, I just wanted to share with you all a song that I wrote for my sister Rachel who graduated on Saturday [Yay!:) She and I were the first two kids in our family and we've always been great friends and buddies throughout life. I love her very much and she is a huge blessing in my life and the life of our whole family. I wrote this song as I was reflecting back on the years of life that we've traveled through as brother and sister- from the silly things we used to do as kids, to the adventures we've had as we've gotten older, to the joys and the sorrows of life, and how The Lord has been the One who's been there in the hard times and the times of celebration, in the valley and on the mountaintop, and how He has indescribably exciting and fulfilling and beautiful plans for our futures. I hope you all enjoy this song, and that it's a blessing, and I love you Rachel :)

R.I.P.?

Woah! Working in Blogger again is like re-uniting with an old friend... it's been a long time. 
But no, I'm not dead, and I do want to try and keep this blog around... if possible. I've been having a really crazy-full summer and have been doing some real cool stuff, and I hope to put some of that on here -for those who haven't given up on me in my absence- to see. All this to say, hope you all are doing well, and we'll see what comes on here. Good evening!

Happy New Year! [And a song]

Hey everyone! Happy New Year!


I hope that everyone had a blessed Christmas and a blessed start of 2011. I hope you will all pardon me for not posting many Advent posts :( I know it sounds excusey, but this was probably one of my personal busiest Christmas seasons. However, my prayer was that God [who is never too busy] would remind each and every one of you [and me] of His great and wonderful love for us demonstrated through Jesus Christ. And guess what!? Just  because we pack up Christmas decorations and manger scenes, that blessed sense of security and worth as a result of God's love doesn't go anywhere! It's there every single day of this year and for all eternity. I pray that I would remember this as my first year goal. It changes everything.


So anyways, I didn't have a whole lot more to say here, but I wanted to share something with you all that I've been working on recently: I've done a little bit of song-writing over the years and now I've been messing around with filling them out musically and learning about recording them. I thought I'd show you guys an acoustic version of a song called "He's Alive". Hope you enjoy it!

So that's that :) Hope to see you all sometime in the not-too-far future!

Joy to the World

Hey guys!  Sorry about recent lack of Advent posts- I’ve been quite busy and was out of town last weekend.

Anyways, this has been an interesting Advent season for me.  I started out wanting to make sure and share the heart of Advent and Christmas with you all, and it turns out that I’ve needed to be reminded of the Joy of Christmas myself.

When we are young, the Christmas season is a time of unexplainable excitement and wonder. December takes about a year and a half to pass by,  everyone you meet seems full of the Christmas spirit, you could pass a whole day just talking about what might be under the Christmas tree, and every time you hear the Christmas  story or look at a manger scene, you get the feeling that you were old friends with Mary and Joseph and played an important part in that story.  And in the blessing of that season, you are fully aware of the fact that God loves you.

So what happened?

Just when and where and how did we lose that childhood view of Christmas [or the world for that matter]? Why are we just a little more reserved in our excitement? Why are our hopes a just a little less wild? Where did the childhood wonder and joy go? Am I the only one who feels like my heart is two sizes too small once in a while? What’s the deal?

 Some people call it growing up, some people call it real life, some call it experience, the way things are, a dose of reality, or site any number of other reasons for things “just not being the same”.

God calls it a fallen world.

You and I and every other human being on this planet are born into and grow up in a world that is full of sin, and heartache, and hopelessness, and strife, and tears, and lies, and pain. Childhood innocence is quickly replaced by grown-up “reality”. At some point we have all had our bodies, our trusts, and our hearts broken. It is a part of life in a broken place. Our mistake though is not realizing that there is evil and hurt in the world, but that as we mentally adjust to the people, places, and circumstances around us, we sometimes re-think our perspective of God [or His perspective of us]. 

It’s the “What-does-God-think-about-when-He-thinks-about-me?”question. If this life isn’t exactly what we’d hoped and thought it to be, is God maybe not everything we hoped and thought Him to be? Satan wants to put a little wedge of doubt in our hearts about God’s heart toward us; and he tries to get us to look at God in light of our fallen world- instead of looking at our fallen world in light of God. Satan has used the tactic of calling God’s heart into question ever since the garden of Eden. 

Part of what led Charles Darwin to look for a worldview that left out God, was his idea that all the pain and suffering in the world proved that God wasn’t loving. Charles Darwin was a man- and no stranger to heartache. His mistake was using his pain and sorrow as his lens when he looked at God, not letting the Comforter be the lens with which he viewed his world.

So how can we really know God’s heart toward us? 

I’ve heard it said that a lot of the time our perception of God’s heart toward us is subconsciously based on our own heart toward ourselves. If we are having a good day and pleased to see that we are doing the right thing, then it’s easy to believe that God loves us. If, however, we are struggling on a given day and falling short and feel worn down etc., then it’s a lot harder to believe that God loves us. 

Thankfully though, God’s heart doesn’t change. Our moods, minds, hearts, and circumstances change, but God is constant- the one being who will never let us down, never be in a bad mood, never be too busy for us, and never stop loving us.

I love to remember God’s message to us on the birthday of His Son:

“Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel of the Lord said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you: You will find the Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’ So it was when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.’ And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. Now when they had seen Him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this Child.”

What incredible and healing words for a broken world to hear. If we can get past the Bible-eese of these verses that we sped through as kids, we will find a treasury of blessing in the major statements of God’s heart toward us on that night in Bethlehem. 

God sent his message not to the priests- not to the king- not to somebody the son of somebody the son of somebody- but to some shepherds out in a field. I don’t guess these guys were on the Pharisee’s top 10 best Jews list either- they were regular guys. They were broken, they were disenchanted with themselves and with the world, and they desperately needed a Savior. 

God loves us enough to be that Savior. 

He didn’t resign Himself to have to put on His boots and help us [again], His whole world plan ever since man was first broken, was making ready the coming of our Redeemer.  

Jesus. Emmanuel. God with us. 

In case you’ve forgotten, in case you never heard, in case you just need to be blessed by the realization once again, allow me to remind you [and me] that God desperately, madly, wonderfully,  fully, securely, strongly, foreverly, unchangingly, unstoppably, unexplainably, undeservedly, completely, and amazingly,

Loves us.

That’s why He came. That’s why He still comes. That’s why He gave and still gives. And that’s why we have 

Christmas.

Thanksgiving, 20, and on to Advent

Hey everybody! Good to be back on the bloggy screen again! I must apologize for my inconsistency with posts, but I have been quite busy in several areas this fall. The last time I posted was in October at when I was going to Illinois for the SAT. [Which went very well by the way; God blessed and our candidate, as well as many other GenJ candidates won! :) It was an altogether pretty encouraging election as far as I'm concerned. As we continued into November, I don't know about the rest of you but we had one of the prettiest Falls I've ever seen. It's been very beautiful and long-lasting around here. You all may know this already, but November-February is one of my all-time favorite parts of the year. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is the holiday we celebrated last Thursday called Thanksgiving. In a day and age where our country as a whole has all but forgotten God's blessing and amazing Providence in and on our nation, it was a privilege to take some time last week with a group of our extended family to gather and focus on the true story of the Pilgrims in the 1600s who's example we follow today with our national  Thanksgiving.

Has anyone ever read George Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation? It's very inspiring and boldly claims the fact that we are a Christian nation. The writings of William Bradford and Mr. [John?] Carver do the same. In the attempt to "secularize" our country today, humanists have launched an all-out assault on our country's yesterdays. If they can write books that neutralize and leave God out of His own story, than the next generation of Americans will grow up at best very befuddled about what really happened. The revisions of history that happen today are complete nonsense of course, but if there's no one who knows the true story, than how will we expose the nonsense for what it really is? Anyways, that's why I love reading the writings of the great men and women of God who's lives make up the glorious fabric of God's work in

America's history.

After Thanksgiving, I had the honor of taking my sisters and cousins out to do some Black Friday shopping with some friends and our N.Y. Uncle and Aunt. Very fun :) The next day [Saturday] was a special day to me as it was my 20th birthday! :) So I had a real good time, and was blessed by the support of my family and friends. Thanks guys!

But with all that other fun stuff last week, yesterday marked the start of a time of year that is incredibly special to me and our family. It's the time during the last days of November, and the first 3 or so weeks of December, that we look forward to, prepare for, and remember the coming of our Savior who was born a little over 2,000 years ago as the final piece of God's plan of redemption that had spanned the whole of world history after the Garden of Eden. It's a time when we re-open and re-look at and rejoice in the glorious, wonderful gift of the first Christmas. It is hard for me to put into words the joy and excitement of this season that has been called 

Advent.

Last year around this time, I did some posts related to this season of Advent, and it is my desire to do the same sort of thing this year. With God's blessing we will all be blessed as we look once again at His plan and sacrifice and heart toward us- His creation that has rejected and sinned against Him, but who He loved enough to come down from Heaven to walk this earth as one of us- though fully God at the same time. It's the story of Christmas.

 

Student Action Teams

Hey guys! How's the fall? I hope everyone's enjoying it so far and doing well.

I'm going to make this a short post, as I have some packing to take care of. As some of you may remember, I'm involved with a group called Generation Joshua that's part of HSLDA. GenJ is a Christian youth civics organization that trains young people in worldview, campaigning, government, politics, etc. Each election cycle, they send out Student Action Teams [or SATs] This year they have SATs all around the country and they've asked me to help lead the one in Chicago area. [Originally I was supposed to go to New Mexico, but at the last minute plans changed]. Anyways, I'm scheduled to leave tomorrow morning and meet the rest of the team at O'Hare airport. I would appreciate it if you all would keep these SATs in your prayers [as well as the elections in general] I pray that God would use His people to elect Godly candidates to lead our nation. Please also pray for safety as we travel and walk around talking to people, and stay in host homes. I will probably be in charge of a group of kids that will go around and campaign, sign wave, phone bank, etc. I'd also love prayer for my work with the kids and for the kids themselves during this week. I should get back on the 3rd of November, and if I'm not dead maybe I'll post a recap of our time :) [I mean dead tired......don't get all excited yet...I hope to live a good long time more ;) In other news, I finally got my laptop that I bought a few weeks ago.... :D it's pretty great! I'm thankful to have it, and now I have to pay case money [fiddlesticks] oh well, I found a case at Wal-mart that I think will be good. In even other news, please pray for "The Child" documentary. We hope to have it wrapped up and ready to be sent to the replicator by tonight!! I've been over at the office several nights this past week working on behind the scenes, but Grace and Daniel and Elissa have been pretty full time for a long time now. Please pray for everyone involved and the impact that God wants this movie to have. Incidentally, we are in the midst of scheduling showings all around the country [hopefully 5 in every congressional district I think!] The point is, we hope to have one near you! If you want to find out where it is, go to parentalrights.org and look to see if they have the showing list up yet. If there's not one near you, how about hosting you own showing? [Pretty fancy to tell people, "yeah me and my family like to premiere movies every now and then.. we know some filmmakers and they always give us the inside scoop" ;-) [or something like that] Well hey, I'd better go pack so I hope everyone's doing well, and to see some of you guys soon somehow! Ciao.

The Newest "Child" Trailer

Hey Everyone! Here's the link to our most recent "The Child" trailer: "The Child"  It's really cool and it shows alot more of the interviews that we did on our trip.

Also, last night I got to work the Parental Rights.org booth at the Peanut Festival. I had the late shift [8-10:30pm], but I still got some great responses from people...it was cool ;) We also have a TV that loops our main two trailers for the documentary...[so you have something to watch if no one comes by ;) But yeah, I think that every person I talked to [except maybe one person] had a favorable reaction to the PRA. So we'll keep praying and spreading the word. Also, as I've said before, feel free to stop by ParentalRights.org to find out more! Okay, well I've gotta run, so you all have a great day!