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."

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.

It's not about me!

Hi all I just needed to mark a couple of milestones that just happened to me last week.

I am joining the setting Captives free mentor course. It is my hope that the Lord will use me to help others be set free! Please Pray for me as delve into this 120 day course, I am sure the Holy Spirit will give me strength and perseverance to follow through.

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It was pretty amazing how God was "cooking with Gas" as my pastor jollybeggar said last Sunday.

I shared my testimony of my Journey back to Christ and how he freed me from the captivity of my habitual sin. It was awesome and very humbling at what Christ accomplished that day!

WOW!

Then something else exciting happened as well. I passed my 60 day Way of Purity Course, on Thursday May 24Th, 2007. God was with every step of the way through my mentor and accountability partners(my beautiful loving wife and Jollybeggar) Thanks for you help guys, I couldn't have finished without all the support!

Thank You!

Here's a poem I just found looking for some inspiring photo's. It hit home to me, and I just had to share it:


You ask me how I gave my heart to Christ,I do not know.There came a yearning for Him in my soul so long ago.I found earths flowers would fade and die.I wept for something that would satisfy.And then, and then somehow I seemed to dare To lift my broken heart to God in prayer.
I do not know, I cannot tell you how,I only know He is my Saviour now.
Anonymous

May God Bless everyone, who stumble's upon this Blog, and know that he is always there watching over you, waiting to take you back into his loving arms. As a testimony of his Glory, he has taken me back and he will welcome you home too! Just lay it all down at the cross and be free!

Let me put it this way, God is great!

Just recently I was called to repentance by the Holy Spirit, to return to the Lord and break free from my habitual sin, that was keeping me disconnected from the Lord.
This is how I felt while I was in sin! I bet you we have all felt this way sometime in our lives.
This happened one Sunday Morning when our Pastor was speaking on the Call of God and the Courage it takes to follow that Calling.

Well low and behold, God called me to repentance and it has all been for his Glory since.

I proceeded with a meeting with my pastor and repentance of my sins, it was as at that moment, a weight had been lifted. You can never know such freedom until, you have exposed your most hidden private sins into the Light. Now that I am free in Christ, I am not ashamed to admit that I was addicted to internet pornography and self gratification, it was an addiction just as bad as alcoholism or any other drug addiction, but worse, you had constant access to this drug and you couldn't separate your self from it. Thanks to the love of Christ and the strength of the Holy Spirit, I was guided to freedom, via counseling and support of my pastor and this great site called http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com. This site is so awesome because all the mentors have been just where I was and all the testimonies, were not far off from my own story. The best part is that it's free, and they are doing a most noble calling of all helping people be free through the Grace of God and Christ's death on the Cross. We must Learn to admit that we cannot do anything without God's Grace.

John 4:13-14 13 - Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."



We must turn away from sin and drink from the well of Christ's Water. Sin can only lead us to thirst and death. We must not drink from Sin's well of stagnant water.

We must understand that no matter how deep we are in sin, that Christ is always there to accept us into his loving arms.

I just came back from a trip to Las Vegas the city of Sin, wow and let me tell you about sin.
I wondered why the Lord wanted me to go there, but a few things did happen. He showed man's undoing by not relying on him, and he showed me how wide and deep his love is for man through Nature.... The first day at Vegas, I took a trip to the Grand Canyon(if you haven't been there before, you need to!) Just the vastness and Grandeur of this place just put me back into my shoes. Here's a picture of the Canyon. That's little old me on that rock!


The view reminded of Ephesians 3:14-18:
14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family^[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.


So needless to say, I have this calling to witness to other men who are slaves to sexual immorality and to be there to give them counsel and prayers, to help them come back to the Lord and be free in Christ! Through him we can do anything. Men can be pure at heart, we just need to have our lives focused on the right prize, and that's Christ!

I welcome all your prayers out there. With the help of my pastor, I will be pursuing this ministry calling, and possibly following his calling deeper into a pastoral calling if that is ever God's will. Please pray for me that the Lord grant me courage, wisdom and the heart to continue with this mission he has given unto me for his Glory.