Sunday, February 24, 2008

Deep Thoughts

This is going to be a short one today guys just a real quick throw back to a time that many of you might not remember and, that is a time when Saturday Night Live was good. Back when they had things such as Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy. Tonight I was hanging out with some guys from the JW youth group and we were looking them up on you tube and Google and we found a web site that had a ton of them and that also had some code for a way to have them scroll some on my blog, so we copied it over and are going to see how it goes. By the way we could not find my favorite one that SNL did one time and it has to do with a kid getting splashed by a car if any one can find it let me know.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The Greatest Commandment

The Greatest Commandment

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:

36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'[a] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[b] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

I am betting that most of you that read this blog have herd this before but, I have just finished reading well listening to since I have the audio book and pretty much dislike reading a lot. Anyway I am not sure what I thought about this book over all but one part stood out to me and really challenged me and I thought that I would share that with you. That is wear The Greatest Commandment came into the picture the gentleman who wrote the book took an interesting look at it. He felt that he could not obey the second part of the commandment because he did not love him self. If he would treat people or talk to people the way that he talks to him self then he would be most likely have no one who would ever talk to him or be around him. This led him to figure out that he loved his neighbor better than him self a lot better. This really challenged me because I feel as if I can relate to this in a lot of ways.

Let’s just assume for the purpose of this post that I have no problem loving God with all my heart and with all mind and with all my soul which I do struggle with quite a bit but lets just say I have that down. I do not love my self very well at all especially right now I have not been loving my self for along time now. I put my self down all the time and I more often then not do not feel as if I should love my self or that others should waste love on me. I all ways feel that it would be selfish for me to have people waste effort and love on me when there are plenty of others who either deserver it more or need it more than I do.

Now it is important to understand that the problem I have is not with a lack of confidence I have but in an in ability to receive or accept love. I know that I am capable of many things and I know my strong points and the points that I need to work on. Now if I can not seem to receive love from others how one could assume that part of the problem I was talking about in my last post could be caused by this one. It can also be assumed that since I can not receive love from my self or others have I really received God's love into my heart or has my relationship with him been purely a mental thing and not a thing of the heart. From this one could make the jump that if I have not received God's love in my heart (even though I believe with out a doubt that God sent his only son Jesus down to earth to die for my sins) how is that I can share God's love with others. I am not sure but I see God working through me almost everyday in the lives of people around me.

I also can't help but think especially since I for some reason decided to write this on Valentines Day that my inability to love my self or receive love could be why I have not dated any one for real in my life time. I did however "Go out with" a girl in the 8th grade but that was not truly a dating relationship. Could it be that I do not allow my self to get to a place wear I can have feeling for some one and or receive feelings from some one else. Again sorry for the randomness and my inability to write well for you but these truly are the thoughts of a sinful man as they come spewing out of my head.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Love?

So I sometimes wonder how can I love God and know that God loves me when I don't think I have a clue what it is to love another person. I don't really think that I have ever loved some one I am meaning truly love them. I care deeply for my friends and family I want only the best for them and if there is pain or suffering in there lives I would do anything in my power to take it way, but is that love? I have know Idea I want to love I long for nothing more than I long to be in love with some one and spend the rest of my life with them. It worries me that at the age of 23 I have no idea how to love or care about some one in that way and that I don't think that I ever had even an inkling of what it is to feel that way or even how to work at it. I really feel that hinders my ability to do ministry sometimes how can I love Oak Hills and the kids if I am not sure what it is to love, don't get me wrong I know that Christ died for me, and that because of this I get to go to heaven. I feel that this is the most important information to share with high school kids but I always feel that it is a logical decision that I have made because it just makes some much sense to me but not a very emotional decision of love. I hate that because I don't know much about love or how it feels that when my friends and family are going through things with people they love or loved that I can not help them or give them advice and trust me on this some of them have been really going through some stuff that I just can't help them with. I also feel that now that I have waited so long to get in the game of love that I am so far behind that I won't be able to catch up with the knowledge everyone else seems to have. I would like to apologies for the incoherent rant that you just read another thing that I struggle with is getting my thoughts out of my head and to sound good in words. I just can't do it.