Milestones

Milestones

                Ok so this last Saturday, the 17^th of September was my 14 year anniversary of entering into military service. The 11^th of September was the 10 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Two Towers and Pentagon. 28 July was the 10^th anniversary of the day that I married the most wonderful person in the world. June 11^th 2011 was the day that I gave my life to Christ and God. All these events in my life were decisions that I made that define the man I have become today, I also truly believe that they are decisions that were joined within themselves. I believe that without any specific decision made I would not be in the place I am today.

                I joined the military late in life on 17 September 1997 after losing my job as a Paramedic. I had a wife and child and needed work to support them. My initial reason for joining the military was not out of a duty filled obligation that I might have felt for my country. The recruitment process was easy and I was enlisted into the Infantry in a few short days. What I received from this decision in my life was a sound work ethic, discipline, and a sense of love for my country that I did not have at that time in my life. I was also in a environment that I was enjoying and a job that I loved as well as the people associated with that job. Through this decision to join the military I had the opportunity to experience my first divorce but was able to take from that marriage a good friend who is now more like a family member and my oldest son Colby. I was able to meet the most wonderful person in the world, my wife Shannon. After only a short time of dating we got married and shortly starting popping out children like it was going out of style.

                The events of September 11^th 2001 changes mine and my family’s life forever as it did for so many people living in this country. I was no longer in a army that was operating during peace time, I was suddenly thrown into the real possibility that I could be put into harm’s way and possibly never see my family again. I was married just over a year to Shannon and we had one child already and another on the way. I spent 2 more years in Germany after the attacks, but as soon as the time for me to leave Germany came, I had volunteered to go to a unit I knew was deploying to Iraq. Just like all the other Soldiers of this time frame I had this insane urge to serve my country in the best way that you could and that was in a war zone, I made this decision without telling my wife and when it came down to it, I lied to her by telling her that the Army had made its decision to send me to the unit I was going to. I wasn’t until after my tour in Iraq that I actually let her know that I had volunteered to go. This decision that I made was a life altering experience, you can never truly prepare for war and what you might have to do or what you will see and who you will lose. I came back from Iraq a different person with a different outlook on the world, started drinking a little more that I had already been, and distancing myself from my family. My family and I picked up again from Washington and moved back to Germany with the unit I was with. We got to Germany and within a year I was back on deployment orders. This was not something we had expected and I found myself going to war again but this time for 15 months. It finally hit me that in a 4 year period I was gone for 27 months and missing my children growing up and time with my wife. In October of 2010 I was medically retired from the Army and we settled down in Louisiana.

                After 36 years of fighting the fight within myself, my lovely wife led me to the Church. Sure we had gone before and I wasn’t really into it. Then I met my Family at First Baptist Rosepine. Right from the beginning my wife and I knew that this place was different. I found myself and my family immediately accepted into this community and in a very short succession I found myself on my face giving myself to Christ and the Lord. On 11 June 2011 I was forgiven by Christ and the Lord for my sins and I vowed to live my life for the glory of God. Since this time my wife and I have dedicated and built our family around the Church and God. There is nothing that we do that does not involve the Lord. We shape our lives and our time around the Church and have volunteered everything and every moment we have to helping to build up the Church and its body.

                You see, if I hadn’t made the decision to join the military I would not have met my wife. I would not have experienced the war, would not have ever came to Louisiana, would never have met my Church family, and probably would never have found my Salvation. I believe now that God had a plan for me through all this and was helping to guide me in the decisions that I made. Even more now, I know that God is guiding me as I start my journey into becoming a Pastor hopefully. I begin school in under a month and I can’t wait to begin. The excitement and spiritual completeness I feel is something I don’t ever want to lose. So if you are in a bad place, or you think that you might have made a bad decision, look back to all the decisions you made to get you to where you are. Are these decisions all linked in some way. I bet if you look hard enough you will figure out that they are. God Bless and thank you for reading.

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For Christ or Yourself

               There has been something eating at me for the last few weeks and I have been praying about whether or not I should share this with those who read this blog, and the decision that I have been led to is that it is something that should be addressed. I warn you before you start reading, I am going to be frank in the writing and it might offend some who read it, remember that at anytime you have to option to stop reading or to continue.

                I have been trying to come to terms with why it is so hard for people to believe and make the decision to accept Christ into their lives and become a believer and receive their salvation. I know from personal experience that it is so much harder to fight the Love that God puts into your heart and accept Christ than to just completely submit to that same Love and live your life for Christ and God.

John 3:16

“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”

    

Think about that verse right there, in the Old Testament God was exact and unforgiving in his decisions. If you disobeyed him you usually died or had some sort of really bad thing happen to you. With the coming of His One and Only Son that brought a changing of the times so to speak. God had put his Son on this world to teach us about God and show us the way to our Salvation. Yet people still didn’t believe and His own people crucified him. The above verse though says it plain enough; all you have to do to receive your salvation is believe in Him. Why do people find this to be so difficult? For me I think the problem for most people is the complete submission to the Lord that gets people stumbled up. I was one of those people as a matter of fact. What I can tell you is that once I made that leap and just submitted my whole life and everything in it to the Lord, I now have a feeling of spiritual completeness that I never had in my life. My whole life I always felt as if something was missing and after 36 years I finally found it.

Colossians 2:6-12


“Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus in the Lord, walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, just as you were taught, overflowing with gratitude. Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elemental forces of the world, and not based on Christ. For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, and you have been filled by Him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.”

So let’s say that you are one of the people out there who believe in God and in Jesus but have not found your salvation because you are too scared or stubborn to submit your life to the Lord, what are you waiting for? I caution you though because receiving your salvation is not the end of the race, it is just the beginning. Receiving Christ into your heart starts the longest, hardest, and most rewarding race of your life. From the moment you accept Christ into your heart it is your duty to live your life for Christ and do everything to Glorify the Lord through your actions. This is not a onetime deal but a lifetime decision to do everything that you do to Glorify the Lord. I deal with this everyday in my life and in my family’s life. My wife and I are now constantly vigilante to ensure that everything that we are doing is being done to Glorify the Lord, and reinforcing this concept in our children as well.



Colossians 3:16-17

 “Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

My family has definitely taken the saying in the Word, under the Word, and in Prayer, to heart and put it to use in our everyday lives. We read the Word every day; Sometimes on our own, but also as a family. It is my responsibility as the spiritual leader of the house to ensure that my Children are doing this and we have Bible study at home to accomplish this. We study the Word every day in the home and EVERY opportunity that presents itself at the Church. Wednesday nights we attend our Thrive group at the Church and Sundays our entire day is dedicated to the Lord and the Church. We attend our Bible study, followed up with the Church Service, and completed with our night of AWANA. Lastly we are always in Prayer every day. We have submerged our lives into the Word of the Lord and the Church. There is not much that we do now that doesn’t involve the Church and I am not sure that our faith with be as strong as it is without the Church. You see you can’t have one without the other. You can have all the intentions of bringing Christ into your life, but if you stop at your salvation and then decide that that was all you had to do, it is much harder to grow spiritually. The Church has provided a place where we can worship our Lord with others that we Love and has provided a place to where we can continue to learn more about the Word each time we go in to the House of the Lord. If you are just attending Church to get that once a week feeling of spiritual relief, I challenge you to extend yourself out more and attend every event that your Church offers. I promise you that you will feel more spiritually complete and you will be built up stronger for it. If you refuse to do this or don’t think you need to, if you find yourself making excuses continuously for why you can’t be there, maybe you should ask yourself this question; am I just Playing Church? Thank you for reading and God Bless.

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Obedience

Obedience

Exodus 19: 5

Now if you will listen to Me and carefully keep my covenant, you will be My own possession out of all the peoples, although all the earth is Mine

                When you see the word obedience in your normal everyday life a lot of different things come to mind as to what that can mean. Some see or hear the word and do the exact opposite; they relate obedience to submission and become immediately defiant against what they are being told to do. As a Christian I have learned that when God puts something on your heart and leads you in the direction that you should go that it is my responsibility to be obedient and do His will. Some things here recently in my life that have come up are perfect examples of this.

                I have been going to college on-line now for about 6 years I think. My level of dedication to this adventure had been minimal due to a few factors in life that I would love to blame, but I am starting to understand it was because I never had a true direction with what I wanted to do or was being led to do. I started my degree in criminal justice with a minor in forensics, then when it was apparent that I would not be able to be a police officer because of my disabilities I switched to homeland security. That did not last so long as I lost interest in it, I then kicked around the thought of going through nursing school, and then quickly switched over to business management. I was kind of just floating out there. It wasn’t until I had accepted Christ that I had that overwhelming sense of direction laid upon my heart. That is when I realized I wanted to study everything that I could about Christianity and our Lord and the Ministry. Since I had obeyed what was put on my heart everything has been pretty much gravy from there. Sure there was the speed bump with Moody Bible Institute but I now know that was Gods way of telling me he had a different direction and school for me to attend. This was even more reinforced last week when I was talking to my mother and it finally donned on her what I was going to college for and that I was going to be pursing spreading Gods word and working toward becoming a pastor. The first thing that she said was that there was going to be no money in it, it was hard for me to explain to my mother that this decision has nothing to do with money or fame or acclaim, but that it was something that was put on my heart and I had no other choice that to obey what I was being led to do.

                My professional life here recently has given me some very interesting opportunities as well. I have had the chance to apply for higher paying positions that would help out in my house financially. Given the opportunity to make a good amount of money in a short period of time which would help to financially take care of my family. The problem was that with each one of these opportunities it would have affected my schooling. Although they each looked so good when I first heard about them, after talking to my better half and us praying about these situations it just was not what God has in store for me. It is clear that school is what I need to be focusing on and I will not let anything material get in the way of that.

                Most recently I have the opportunity to be a part of a team that will help to expand our Church growth and reach other people in the community. Reach, Share, and Serve is the focus for my Church body/ family and it is definitely more than just a motto to my family. My children thoroughly enjoy the S.O.U.L. program this summer and love helping people. My wife and I pour all our time into whatever our Church might need, whether it is in Children’s Church, the Nursery, AWANA, or media we are here to serve the Lord in whatever way He commands us. With this new project that my Church has going we were asked to pray over whether or not we would like to participate. I have been praying and I have made the decision to obey what has been put on my heart and to commit myself to this project. I know that this is the direction I am supposed to go, through this project not only will I be able to help Grow my Church body, but I will be able to Reach, Share, and Serve the community, and I will also continue to grow spiritually through this process. The whole time doing this being able to Glorify God through my faith with my works.

                So as a Christian I my views on obedience are fairly simple. I said at the beginning that obedience is a responsibility but let me correct that by stating that obedience to God is not a responsibility but as a Christian it is my Duty to be obedient. Thank you for reading and God Bless.

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Child Salvation

Coming to the Cross

            Well let me tell you something, this week has been an exciting and spiritually fulfilling week not only for myself, but for my entire family. If you are a parent and have not had the opportunity to be an active part in one of your children coming to Christ, you are missing out on something huge. This weekend our son Gregory made that leap of faith and accepted Christ as his Savior, but I can tell you it was a process that my wife and I had felt and seen coming for weeks now I believe. There is nothing material in this world I would have rather experienced than him coming to Christ and I could not be happier for him.

            The signs are really kind of subtle but in your face if you have a child who is seeking to give their life to Christ. As a parent, there are a plethora of situations throughout your children’s lives that you are expected to be ready to handle. One of those situations that I found out I was not ready to handle properly was guiding my child to the Lord. You see I think that Gregory had done everything he could to let me know what he wanted and was looking for me to confirm that for him and I just kept missing the early signs.

            About a month ago or maybe more, I was in the pool cleaning and vacuuming my son just came out and said to me “dad guess what, I just prayed to God to forgive me for my sins and to help make me a better person.” Do you know what I did? I blew him off is what I did. Looking back now, I truly think that this was the moment that my son took Jesus into his heart and found his salvation. He was not prompted in any way to come out and say that to me, it was just something that was on his heart that he wanted to share and I didn’t catch it and missed my chance at that time. From that moment on Gregory’s attitude towards the Word and Jesus had changed.

            Soon after the pool incident, my wife and I started to know a steady spiritual growth in Gregory as the days and weeks progressed. They were subtle and things that you can write off as a child being a child, but now that we look back at it they were the things we should have been picking up on. Gregory was all of a sudden extremely focused on saying grace at the table, wanting to learn more about the Bible and Jesus, and was periodically just jazzed up by some of the music that our worship band would play. I remember one Saturday in particular during the bands rehearsal my son telling me how much he loved one of the songs that was played, when I asked him “why” he told me “because it talks about Jesus and I love Jesus.”

            This past week we enrolled Gregory in the connect class for our Church to let him learn more about Jesus and his personal relationship with Him. I also started to conduct a Bible study with the kids at night; it was during this Bible study last Friday that it finally hit me that I hadn’t been listening to my son. I asked Gregory to open us up in prayer and noticed that he was praying specifically to become a Christian by the end of the month. He was associating the act of becoming a Christian with the completion of this class from Church and Baptism alone. After the class I pulled him out to talk to Shannon and myself. We explained to him that becoming a Christian did not mean you had to complete a class and that it was something your heart will tell you when it is time. We also made the decision to have him talk to Mrs. Nicole at band practice in the morning.

            Mrs. Nicole did get a chance to speak with Gregory the next day, and confirmed what we had thought. Gregory was right there on the edge just waiting to make that leap. The one thing about Gregory is that he is intelligent and was thinking too much about this. I know that he was thinking about that eternal commitment to Christ and that he understood that giving control of his life over to the Lord meant changes in his life. This kind of slowed him down a little.

            This Sunday during service our family tried a new approach with our kids to attending the adult service. We took away the video games and had our children actually listen to the message being delivered by Pastor Greg. Well it went as expected causing my wife a lot of grief, since I was running the media booth and not sitting with her. About 10 minutes in I had to have Gregory come and sit with me in the booth. At this time I made him actually listen to the message and surprisingly he started taking notes. When the time came for the invitation I noticed that Gregory had gotten on his knees inside the booth and started praying. I explained to him at this time what the invitation period was for and asked him if he wanted to go to the front of the Church and pray at the Altar. He answered yes but asked if I would go with him. We went up and prayed and on the way back I asked him what he prayed for and he told me “for God to take away my sins and to take charge of his life.” I wasn’t going to miss this for a second time. I immediately asked him if he wanted to talk to Pastor Greg and have him say a prayer for him and Gregory said yes. It was all over from there, it was awesome watching Gregory answer the questions that Pastor Greg had for him. What was even better was seeing that he understood the gravity of the answers he was giving and he understood that he had to surrender to Christ and let Christ lead his life.

            This was one of the most spiritually satisfying experiences I have ever encountered. Watching him go through this process has strengthened my faith and my family is stronger for it. The Lords Kingdom is being built up strong in our family and God is our life. There is nothing we won’t do or are unwilling to do for Him and we will happily give everything we have for Him. Now onto Zachary who is being our stubborn hold out, but as it was pointed out to us, God knows when and where Zachary will feel it in his heart and realize that the only way to live is to live through Christ. Thank you for reading and God Bless.

1 John 3:18-20 Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and actions. This is how we will know we belong to the presence, even if our conscience condemns us, that God is greater than our conscience, and He knows all things.

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Mentoring the Kids

Kids First Family Bible Study

            Last night I started to implement our nightly Bible Study inside the house and I must say I think that it went well. I have decided to go with the Bible in a year program with the kids to see how they would be able to handle it and they did pretty good. The study/reading went for about an hour and the kids didn’t complain once, that is a first for me.

            We started with Genesis chapter 1 focusing on the creation of the earth and all that the earth encompasses. I was completely thrilled to see that even after reading the whole chapter, the kids were able to answer the questions that I had outlined for them with very little prompting. They were able to tell me what God created on each day for the first six days, they were able to tell me how many times God said “it was good” in the first chapter, and they were also able to summarize what the chapter was about. It was wonderful to see my kids actually compete over who would answer each question and to show excitement over hearing and reading the Word. Each one of the children took part in reading 4-5 verses at a time and were always eager to read more.

            We then moved to Mathew chapter 1 which focused on the lineage of Jesus and his birth. The lineage portion to the children was definitely harder for them to take in, but once we got to the circumstances around the conception and birth of Jesus the kids were all ears and just chomping at the bit to put their input in. I think the hardest part of this lesson was trying to explain why it was such a miracle that Mary was pregnant. My kids are young and we haven’t really covered sex education yet so trying to explain the importance of Mary being a virgin yet being pregnant was a little hard for me. Thank God for Anna who simply put it that Mary was a special girl who was given a special gift by God to be the mother of Jesus Christ who was put on this earth by His Father to die for our sins. If it wasn’t for her I probably would have had to have a sex education class to explain it. In addition the kids were able to properly identify that the lineage of Jesus tracked back 42 generations to Abraham, that Mary was given a special gift by the Holy Spirit, and that Joseph was told by an Angel of the Lord to marry Mary and name the child Jesus.

            Next came Ezra chapter 1 which focused on the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. This one was a little hard to explain to children so young. They were able to recognize that God commanded King Cyrus through Jeremiah to basically invite the exiles back to Jerusalem and allow them to worship God. They also were able to identify that those who had persecuted the exiles were compelled to give goods, gold, silver, and livestock to the exiles as they came back to help them out in the rebuilding of their homes and the House of the Lord.

            Finally we ended with Acts chapter 1 which focused on the events following the crucifixion of Jesus. Even though this was toward the end of the session the kids were definitely energized in this portion of the class. The kids really wanted to read and have their input heard here. They each were able to identify that Jesus had risen and was with the apostles for 40 days after his resurrection. They also were able to identify that the apostles went to Mount Olive for prayer, that Judas was punished for his betrayal of Jesus, and that Mathias was chosen to replace Judas as the 12^th apostle.

            Overall this was an extremely good experience for not only my children but also for me. It was spiritually fulfilling to see the kids excited to hear the Word and actively participate in discussion. What was even better was to hear Gregory come out of the room talking about how it was the best hour of his life. I will continue to flood my children with the Word as it is my duty. I learned in AWANA this week while working with the kids that it is said in Deuteronomy 6:6-7;  Basically put, teach my children about the Lord at all times. Thank you for reading and God bless.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7

These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

G.E.D.D.

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Changes

Drastic Changes

  Over this last weekend my wife and I had a few conversations about how we have drastically changed our family’s normal routine and life around the house. We also discussed some changes we would like to make within the home in the near future. For myself I can tell you that I am elated that all these changes revolve around God and the Church. I have listed below some of the changes that have been made and the ones that we are thinking about making here shortly.

    When my family and I started attending Church at First Baptist Church of Rosepine, it did not take long for us to make the decision that that was where we wanted to be. With that decision came our family’s first major change in the house. From the moment that we realized that was where we wanted to be spiritually, we made sure to revolve our schedules around God and the Church in every way. Our favorite days of the week quickly became Wednesday and Sunday. These are the days that we get to worship God with our Church body and see the people that we look forward to seeing all week. My wife and I were talking about it last night and it was definitely a conscious and deliberate decision to make, and believe me when I tell you it was not a hard one to make. In fact, when and if the occurrence happens that we are not able to attend ANY Church function, the sadness and sense of emptiness that is within us is almost sickening. We have both completely dedicated our lives to Christ and want to spend every minute glorifying Him.

   The second change that was made for us in the house was the decision to home school the children. We made this decision whole heartedly knowing that it was going to be a hard road to follow, but we made it to bring our family closer not only physically and emotionally, but also spiritually. We are able to have some quality one on one time with the kids involving their school work, not just a check the block thing that you get from doing homework with them. Even though the teaching is hard (mostly on my wife), there is a definite reward when one of your children unexpectedly says something in a public setting that shows that they are actually learning what you are teaching.

  One of the biggest changes our family has made is how we deal with all of our issues that come up in our lives now. We do not make any choices in our family anymore without first praying about it and following what is laid on our hearts. There have been opportunities here lately where I am definitely being tested and had I not taken a step back and prayed on the subject, I would have failed the tests. So we have definitely made it our priority to take a step back from all major decisions and pray about them as a family and seek His advice about what we should be doing.

   A major and drastic change that is coming in my house is going to be the limiting of the TV. There is no doubt in my mind that this will be one of the hardest changes to date since the TV has been burnt into our daily routine for so long. Starting tonight the kids and I are going to start the Bible in a Year program as part of our Bible study nightly. Hopefully this time will help to take away from the TV and help to teach my children more about the Lord and His Word. We will be reading together 4 chapters a night and I will do my best to teach them what they are reading. In addition we will really start to crack down on the amount of video games that they play, especially when it comes to Sunday’s. This day is a day for God and family so kids get ready to say Goodbye to your video systems.

   If you would have asked me a year ago if I would make these changes, I would have told you absolutely not. Now I couldn’t imagine our lives any other way. Everything in my life has gotten better since I found Christ and the Church and I guarantee that it will only get better. I am finding that the more of my life and vises that I give over to Christ the stronger my life gets and the love in my family gets stronger. If you haven’t made this leap yet I can only ask you WHY? What do you have to lose? It is not hard to say at all, I am a JESUS FREAK and I am proud of it. Thank you for reading and God Bless.

G.E.D.D.

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Good Day

Feeling Spiritual

                Let me tell you what, my day has started off awesome so far. I woke up at 4:45am for work and took my shower to get ready. Had my normal morning coffee, which my wife made the flavored kind for me so that was a treat. Went to take my daily medicine and didn’t even take a look at the bottle of Percocet that is still in my cabinet. Took the dogs out to go to the bathroom, made my lunch for the day, and got into the car to come to work.

                The best part of all this is the actual drive to work. I finally had the chance to put in the CD that John Ogle had lent me this last Sunday at service, and let me tell you, I am spiritually jacked up right now. That was some awesome worship music that I had the privilege to listen to on my way to work. I always listen to Christian music of some sort on the way to work, but today for some reason it felt different. It might be that I have finally rid myself of a poison from my system, or the fact that I sat through an awesome Wednesday night bible study, but it just felt different somehow.

                I am truly hoping that this feeling of peace stays with me throughout the day so I will get home from work and be able to enjoy the time with my family. I do know that if it starts to go away I will definitely be looking to my bible for a little guidance and peace. This week is almost over for me even though this was just my first day back to work, and Sunday is fast approaching (YAY). I can’t wait for the weekend to get here there are some good things going on for me this weekend. On Saturday I have a men’s fellowship night which has been promised to be a night of some serious JESUS LOVING followed by Sunday’s day of worship, lunch with our pastor’s family, and AWANA. What more could you ask for in a weekend? Well hope all have as good a day as I am having, thank you for reading and God Bless.

G.E.D.D.

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