The Cross

I once was told that we must all bear our crosses...being raised catholic, and I came to understand that we must continue to carry our sins(or bear the wrath of God), for we cannot escape them during our lifetime. What folly to believe that the cross is something we must bear, a symbol of despair instead of hope. The cross is something that does not need to be a burden on our backs, Christ has already bore the Cross for us we need not bear it ourselves. Oh how I cringe when I hear the saying we all have our crosses to bear...for I know I need not carry my cross, my sins are forgiven, carried by my savior Jesus Christ. Thank You Lord!

Matthew 11(28-30)28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Square Peg in a round hole...

Where do I fit... I find my self wondering.
I seem to be stuck between two worlds, stuck one foot in this earthly realm and the other in the spiritual realm.

I am at a loss for words at what I am feeling right now...

I seem to be able to connect with people of both worlds, but yet I am apart from both, how does that work? It's as if I am like a pendulum swinging back and forth, sometimes on this side and sometimes on that side. There is never a constant. I want to have two hands doing the same thing, working for God, but I can't seem to let go of this world. I am seeking for place that I wholly fit. In the meantime time, I continue to try force myself into that round hole to only end up scuffed and bruised and not any further along. How can I meld this world and that of our spiritual Father together? I still find myself hesitant to jump in wholly into one or the other worlds for fear of losing myself completely in the wrong direction. I just can't seem to get settled.

Where to next Lord, I am here waiting, seeking asking for guidance, for strength and courage to know where I fit. I can't give up, I find that to live for this world would be so easy but something inside will not let me give up. I have HOPE, I may falter by I still believe in you Lord, Jesus I love and I want to be in your presence, please teach me and guide me to your ways. Please give me something to hold on to. What's next I know I don't belong in this world, but I feel like I don't quite belong in yours. What are these feelings that I am feeling? Give me the wisdom to know that I am seeking your will and not my own.

I want to know you LORD! Help me to quiet my mind and my heart so that I may feel your presence! Why do I always feel like I need attention! I want someone to reach out to me to show me the way, to help guide me on your path. Please help...

Disconnected...

I am sitting here stumped wondering how did I get so lost and disconnected and so full of doubt.
My Faith is so bi-polar, full of highs and lows, and lately its mostly been in the dumps.

Why do I keep doing to this to myself...allowing myself to be consumed by myself?
So preoccupied about my own needs and wants. I lost track of what I was looking for a connection, a life line back to what I have been seeking. I had it once a few years ago and lost it. I let fear and complacency get the best of me yet again. I let the world swallow me up and I didn't give it much of a fight.

What am I supposed to do next, who should I seek...to help guide me back, Lord I can't do this on my own, and you know me best...the fear in me, the fear of believing wholly in something and then to find out I have been let down...a waste of energy with nothing to show.

Is it worth it, are you there? Teach me how to hear you, show me how to feel you. Help me be still O Lord so that I can feel your rain down on me! I long to feel your presence, and know that It is your presence that I am present to.

I love you Lord are there?

calling out on mute...

This item might not make any sense but, it's what I felt I needed to share. This is how I am feeling like inside, it as if everything is turned up loud, but nothing is coming out.

Our Television has been doing the strangest thing these past couple of days, it's almost what I have been feeling like lately. You change the input on what you were watching and the the sound doesn't work, you keep switching the input to try to get it to recognize the audio, you switch the receiver off and on, nothing works...no sound there's a picture but no audio, then you do one of the combinations turn the TV off then receiver, then receiver off and the TV on or cable box off and on then suddenly it starts to work, and you wonder what the heck is broken. Is it the TV, the receiver, or the cable box, and no matter how hard you try to figure out why it happened or how to fix it from happening again, it just happens to start working again.

This is how my spiritual life has been like...sometimes it works and then sometimes it just won't.

No matter how hard you try to figure out why it's broken, it just is. Then suddenly something clicks and the link is working again. Something is broken, and I keep randomly falling there, searching and alone, afraid, that I am missing something, continuing to figure why it's broken and how can I fix myself...but that's the problem...I can't fix it by myself... I need an outside force to come reconnect the link. I am not sure where to go next but it seems like my life goes in two year cycles of change, and I am coming up on that 2 year cycle again with my job here, things are chaotic as usual and I feel the pull of wanting to run and hide to start fresh. I feel myself wanting to retreat again. I can never hide, and there is something I need to learn here but what. Why does it have to be so hard to figure that and so easy to retreat within myself, to be become so distracted with things like computer games, and easy stuff to keep me distracted.

I have start to get back to church but I am still feeling at loss still missing something just out of my grasp and I don't know what the next step is. I feel like a mess inside...with my typical mask out in this world. I believe in Christ and I know he died for my sins, but why do I keep sinning, why am I not growing...why is it so hard to keep in his word to follow him, take up the cross.

I want acceptance so badly...I don't know how to be who I am on inside to outside world. Fear of the unknown, of what if...continues to rule my decisions. I am not supposed to bear a spirit of fear in Christ. I feel lost again, and need to know or at least have a glimmer of something to trust in. My doubt of the future is back again, and feel useless unable to move, but wanting desperately to be more that what I am right now. There is that fear of sacrifice as well...what do I need to give up and the answer is clear...everything...Christ tells us that we need to give it all up to him and that we can trust in God to provide for all of our needs. We have to give him Carte blanche...control of everything in our lives...something our pastor mentioned in this past sermon.

I wonder can I give him that trust to rule everything in my life. Why are we so worried about what we have to give up for him...it is a mere pittance of what we are promised if we trust in God's Grace for us.

I want to live my life to the fullest, and I feel like I am not. I want to be free of this pull of this world.

I need help God...to be able to Trust in you! Are you there God... or is it just my shaken faith that is in it's stage if paranoid conspiracy theory crap that everything we have been taught is just one huge misleading tale to help us live our lives with this hope that there is something more after this short time we have on earth. I need a glimmer of that hope to be shown to me...something to keep me going.

Anyways if you are there GOD...Jesus...I do love you, I thank you for my Wife, my daughter, all the blessings of my family and the health that I do have...I am blessed to have a home, a job, vehicles, food on my plate everyday! I pray that this is not just mere coincidence of life and that we are randomly born to luckily live to 70 and then die off to nothingness. How can people be so sure of you? Have they seen signs, I guess I will always be wondering what's up...but if you are out there...please send me some guidance...I need to know that I am not wasting my time here on earth.

Help me not feel alone, help me find out who I am. I don't who that is but I am this jumble broken mess searching to be whole stuck on the outside(or inside looking out) wondering where to I fit.

If you can hear me Lord I LOVE YOU. If I could only now for sure I would do anything for you.

1 Talent

Where should I start with that title...hmmm.

Matthew 25:14-30 -The third man was not as capable as the other two, but the master gave him one talent with the expectation that he would manage it well. He, too, could have increased his money, but he dug a hole and hid it in the ground.

It's what I think I have done, or am doing, I am hiding my talent in the ground(I have feared living this way my whole life). And I know the key word here is FEAR. I live my life around FEAR, it controls the decisions I make. I have become what I once was lost and alone, confused and full of doubts. I have found myself feeling as if I am back to the starting point again. It's amazing how quickly a man can die spiritually without daily nourishment from the word, and men and women of Christ. I know it but I am lost here God, I don't know what do anymore, I am afraid, and feel like am just spinning in circles. I have become apathetic, and that is the result of the company I am keeping. I am weak and easily swayed by my environment, and I am none to pleased with myself. Where are you God, I know it is I that have hidden myself by the choices I have made. I have let fear rule me yet again, I have let the comfort of my old ways pull my back, to become numb and bitter full of doubt, not that I want to be but
I feel lost, without you without my connection, to the people I love, the people I miss so much, I sometimes feel like I made a big mistake leaving my Church Family in Regina, and I miss them so much. I had a life line there, people that felt like home, that felt like you were near me GOD. I do not want to let that go, and it continues to be there pulling me back as if there is a bungee cord not letting me go. I need to fight fear, and get the courage to join up a group or get help with some spiritual mentoring again. I am losing you Lord, and I want you back, but I am afraid...I want to know you are real... I want to know my faith is worth living for, worth the sacrifices of friends, of family... I need you now, I need your love, your reassurance, your guiding hand, I need a sign of your plan for me. I want get off this neutral highway that I am on, get me off this turn table my head is spinning. Lord be my guide and please give me the courage to make the choices you need me to make. I am sick of putting you on the side bench of my life this past year, please help me know I am seeking something that is real. I will always have that glimmer of hope that this is all real, but there will always be that weight of doubt in my life as well. Please Help me see the light more clearly, and give me a rock that I can lean in. I am seeking a foundation of stone from this sinking quicksand I have been living in. Lost and afraid I am here waiting wanting, needing something real something alive. I am sick of feeling strangled in a numb shell that is keeping me trapped inside.

I LOVE YOU ALWAYS GOD!
Even if I don't always show it in my life!

Struggling

I am struggling however with the drive to move one, to continue on with the fight. I am having a bout of depression, of what's the point... going on and am expressing this openly, because I want to be real here...I do go through these bouts quite a bit, of ups and downs in my faith walk, the next paragraphs are lengthy a bit, you may read what I would like to share or move on, just knowing that I would love your prayers for some guidances, understanding, reassureance, and correction!

I want to be all I can be for the Lord but it seems like, I am having such a hard time giving up the things of this world! All I see in my day to day life are people who don't get it, people that just live like there's no point to all of it but self gratification, self worship if you want to put it that way. I find myself playing too much the cameleon in my day to day activities at work, and in the world with friends. It never fails that where I go the friends I meet, or the people I work directly with are non Christians, that drink, and don't care about anything about religion, and I find myself having to put a mask on, for fear of not fitting in or being too pushy. This is something, I have struggled with all my life, molding my personality into the flow of the crowd, making myself invisible, or a mirror image of my surroundings. I get lost in myself, I am so neutral(I can't find the term here of what I mean but I am exactly like a cameleon, I blend in with the color of the Crowd it so easy it's freaky. I find I can relate to any personality, or group, and just fit in to survive. But that's not living!

If I am in a Christian Group, I am a great Christian, if I am in a drinking group I am a great drinking buddy, if I am in a group that likes racing, hunting or whatever I can adapt and relate. How do I know where I fit, I am everyone, and no one! Who am I but a Child of Christ, but what is my purpose, I want to not just adapt to the world, I want to relate to the world, and show it the truth! I have a feeling that my gifts to adapting to my situation are for this purpose, but at the moment I am desiring a more constant me in all of it. I desire to be a light on a hilll top, not a light in basket, I want to not hide sometimes, and shine at other times, going on and off like a Christmas light, inconsistent, and annoying.

When I look at the cross, and see what Jesus did to make himself the least of the least and to suffer the cruelest death to repay the debt of my sins, I cringe, at how easily this world has blinded itself to this wonderful gift that we have been given! I also am saddened at how easy it is for even myself to turn back to the ways of the world, whether it is having fun with the guys, or at home, playing games on the internet for the greater part of the evening not taking the time to read the bible or spend time with God or at work joining with the co-workers complaining about a boss or a co-worker.

We are so in need of Christ, and we miss him everyday, and I myself am crying out for advice, and counsel. because I know my depression bouts, stem from not being able to be what I am created to be. We as Christian's are truly at battle here, and we are more repressed than we were in after the days of Christ's death. We are repressed by the very freedom we have chartered for ourselves, where free speech, is accepted, unless it is free speech for Christ's Message, it saddens me how any other religion is acceptable these days, and it's the Christian faith that needs to lighten up or be more accepting. We are the most accepting, but people don't like giving things up to deny the old life of sin, self glory, and that is why it is so hard to get through to people.

There is a faith issue going on here, and I too struggle with it...we are tought of Christ's salvation, and we are attacked for it. It feels like our own faith is used against us...we believe and then are attacked to doubt our beliefs because there is no physical proof! We are put at odds against each Christian because we can't all agree on what exactly is the message! Just look at all the translations of God's Holy Scripture, which Translation is acurate...who is most right. It doesn't matter, the only truth is that we are sinners, we can't be free on our own. Christ took on human form on earth, died for our sins, he is our intercessor before God, and we are given a great gift by this death. We are new Creations in Christ! We are free to be re-united with our creator!

Well how do you preach that to the world, without getting scoffed or sounding like a loon on the street corner. How do you live your life for Christ the was you know it's ture without getting judged by your family who is of another Religion or another denomination, that believes God should be worshipped in a specific way! How do yo know your understanding, and faith is the right one. We need to get back to the heart of Woship, the heart of the message, and get it out, but I can't seem to find a way to get there yet! I am praying, and waiting for something, but I am not quite sure yet what that something is! It seems like i am more caught up by keeping up with everything, that I am just plain lost in it all.

The BODY of Christ

I received and interesting e-mail from someone about a site aimed towards fallen Catholics, trying to get more Catholics to return home to the Church, and It got me thinking.

I wanted to reply to him with a long winded e-mail about some caution, and advice. I think there is something greater than just the Catholic Church here. There is a God crisis going on, we especially in North American, are no longer finding the need to put God in our lives, and bit by bit we are pushing family out too! Our Jobs(Money) get first place so that we can buy the things we need(WANT), cars. toys, food, homes...etc. We are constantly trying to fill God's spot in our Lives with worldly things constantly missing it the deeper and deeper we get. I struggle with this myself! We try to find happiness in the things we buy...a New Car, an ATV, That Bigger Home, a new Wii, Or whatever fits your fancy, then there's the TV, the internet... and so on. We get so caught up in the hustle in bustly, we are laying ourselves down to sleep, and almost forget to Put God in our prayers...and briefly mutter off some monotonous same hold bless this person pray for my family same routine, we are taught as Children.

We need to start looking inwards and outwards, we need to get God right and centre in our Lives and then we need to get out of our little bubbles and start seeing where God wants us to be in this World.

As I regress, I see this problem in the BODY Christ in this world, there are so many that are focused on our differences and who did this and did that, that we are inhibiting the work of the BODY of Christ in this World. WE need to start letting the HEAD do the leading quit the turmoild. We are at disease!

Here are is my intended reply: I am cutting my reply to my friend quite shorter but my full thoughts need to posted somewhere!

To Friend:
Yes very good message, but I fear that there is a blindness and too much emphasis on the Catholic Church as being the BODY of Christ.Yes the Catholic Church is a member of the BODY of Christ like all Christians are! We all have our role to play in the BODY of Christ. Without Paul..we would not be able to share the good news of Christ's Salvation. Peter Himself did not want to spread past his Jewish traditions at first. Paul had to discuss this several times with Peter. We must always be wary not to put a blind eye because our traditions. This Goes for Catholics as well as Protestants. We must all learn to work together as one in the Body of Christ, and quit trying to figure out whose right or wrong! In plain truth... if we all believe that Christ came to die for sins, to save us from ourselves, and pay the price we could not pay on our own, something we can never earn...something freely given! Each and everyone of us is a unique child of God, destined as a plan for His Glory!

We just have different roles to play!
1 Corinthians 12(NIV) is a great read in this area. Corinthians and Romans have been very inspiring for me!Here's a tidbit: 12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.



14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

As a Men if God we need to quit looking inward, and start looking outward to keep spreading the Good News like Christ told us! It is until we can learn to work together as one Body of Christ, then only will we see True fruitfulness. We are who we are from Birth called by God. Some may fall some will go and this Page may definitely help some see their true path, and return them to their place! I can only see this site as another topic for conflict with others. I have seen in the past ten years both sides of the fence, and it drives me nuts how we just can't get along. So much turmoil...it's no wonder people fall away whether from Catholic denominations, or protestant! It is not only a Catholic Crisis, it is a God Crisis, we are just getting so caught up in our own needs,desires, and this world is doing nothing to help us see past that, with new cars, toys, computers, Internet, money. It seems like we are pushing God out the more we advance as a civilization.

I pray that one Day we will all be able to function as a whole in Christ's Body!