Love Story Part I

Love stories have little to no interest to me, so one may wonder why have a post with that title. Because the love story I am about to share with you is more moving, more powerful, more majestic than any "Hollywood, made for the big screen" romance movie. It's a story about a Father and a Son. A story where people need Savior and are given one. A real life super hero story. It is the story of Jesus, the Gospel if you will. I will tell it in 4 parts. Part I:SIN

To define SIN we can look at multiple places in the Bible. In Genesis, we have the fall of man, the entrance of SIN into the world:

⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.  ⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” GENESIS 3:4-9

In this passage we see SIN originate, we see 3 things happen here, 1) The serpent or Satan, has fallen from God and wants to cause man to fall as well. 2) We see Eve fall easily to this temptation and thus SIN is born, but Eve is not solely to blame. 3) Adam sins seconds later, knowing fully well what was taking place. The first man and first women SIN and are kicked out of Eden, thus separating us from God.  So SIN separates us from God, therefore, when we SIN we are walking away from God, turning our back on our Creator, slapping Him in the face, saying "we are equal to You."

But how wrong are we? So so so wrong. We are all sinners, we are all far from gods, let alone equal to THE God. SIN is a disease that infects our lives. It diminishes us, slowly, bit by bit, decision by decision, we destroy our life when we SIN. How do I know its destroying us Scripture tells us:

"For the wages of SIN is DEATH..." ROMANS 6:23

Wages, according to Dictonary.com defined as "A fixed regular payment, typically paid on a daily or weekly basis" SIN brings death, death is the wage, a fixed regular payment. SINNING kills us, it pays us with death. We are trapped by this because we are all sinners, myself included.

SIN traps us to a life of death, it causes us to turn our backs on our heavenly Father, and in other words kills us. Leaving us trapped, separated from God without a way to earn our way back into His good favor.

So what are we to do about this???? well find out next time.

Suffering

So this is kind of different from the rest of my post, but I think this is more of the direction I want to take my blog.

This year, 2012, I was encouraged to read through the entire Bible, and I was like "might as well." I choose to do it chronologically. There is this neat little web page that allows you to make a plan to read the bible in a year. So I have started doing it and after some of Genesis, it jumps to Job. The timing of this could not have been more perfect.

While I was in Job, one of my friends passed away at the age of 20. His passing shattered my world, nothing felt the same after that. I had this numbness inside of me. It shut me down. The only thing I had left was my community and thank God I had them. All this reminds me of Job's story.

The book of Job starts with a meeting of God and the Angels. One of the angels is called Satan (or the Accuser), who is most-likely not the devil.  God boast about Job/offers Job for testing by saying:

"Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

 (Job 1:8)

 God is proud of Job and he offers him up to be tested, but not physically harmed. After the first test Job has nothing; he lost his oxes, donkeys, sheep, camels, children, and servants. In other words his entire life, all his wealthy, tore apart, shattered, but what does he do.....he prays:

 "At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:

   'Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.'" (Job 1:20-21)

Job, broken and distraught, prayed to God when he faced a trail, he didn't get angry, he didn't curse God, but praised Him instead. Instead of running away from God and waiting to heal, he turned to God and pressed into him for comfort. Even after his second test Job doesn't sin against God:

His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

   In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. (Job 2:9-10)

Now, Job's suffering was so bad his wife told him to just "Curse God and die," but Job's response, provides some great wisdom. "Shall we accept good form God, and not trouble?" 

It is easy to feel God when "good" things are happening in our lives. It is easy to praise God and thank Him for His blessings and His grace when our lives are in a "good" place. Sadly it is also, easy to shut down our faith when we experience trails. It is easy to say, "My life sucks, nothing is going right, and I can't feel God...so he must not be there."  I've done this too many times, Job teaches us to push into God when we are suffering, when we are hurting. At the end of Job, God makes Job's life even more blessed.

So I guess what I am trying to say is push into God, when its easy and when its challenging. I know in the days around my friends death, the good days where when I read the Word and prayed, the bad days were when I turned my back on God. We should feel challenged by Job to praise God, for the trails and joys in life. Because having faith during trails will only strengthen our relationship with God.

A servent of the Lord,

Kyle

January 7th, 2012

Saying goodbye to you was the hardest thing of done in my life. All that's left are the memories and I will cherish those forever. You were a blessing to so many, myself included, and after you died you blessed 6 more people with new life. Now you are "kick'in it with JC" and I bet you couldn't be happier. I'll miss you Pete, RIP

The Voices of my team mates (minus Katy because she doesn't have voices...yet)

         Kyle D.                                                                                              Jenna C.
Voice #1: The girl voice.                                                               The southern voice.
Voice #2: The story-telling voice.                                                   The british voice.
Voice #3: The lying voice.                                                             The cute guy voice.
Voice #4: The guilty voice.                                                            The sleepy voice.
Voice #5: The executive decision voice.                                          The innocent voice.
Voice #6: The reading voice.                                                          The fake surprise voice.
Voice #7: The parental voice.                                                         The accusing voice.
Voice #8: The weak British voice.                                                   The laugh.
Voice #9: The concerned voice.              The drawn out vowel in the middle of the word voice.
Voice #10: The I'm not really interested voice.                                 The defeated voice.
Voice #11:  The dramatic voice.                                                      The inquisitive voice.
Voice #12:   The Wyldlife voice                                                      The needy voice.
Voice #13:                                            The sassy voice.

Idear

In my last stats class two things happened, 1) we discussed what a median (as in mean, median, and mode) is for 30 minutes or more. 2) My TA, who may or may not be Asian, said "idear."

Now that brings up a whole slew of questions. Is it spelled idear, ideer, idea-er? Is it the same as idea or a new Apple product, which would change the spelling to iDear or iDeer. If it is, what does it do? what does it look like? Could this be Apples "Hallmark," or are they trying to take down "Cabela's" with outdoorsy stuff?

Also, the median in a set of data is the location of the exact middle, it is not a score. just sayin.

Secuirty

So I am preparing to do homework and decided to first check my Facebook, hoping that it will be my only time. Facebook kindly tells me to increase my account security. So I click the link thinking might as well, I've watched "To Catch a Predator", those guys are creepy. Facebook says I should have a security question to help protect my account. So I select the first question, "Where was your mother born?" I answer and Facebook tells me I must choose another answer. To which I yelled at my computer "NO, your wrong, stupid security" only I said security like Bon Qui Qui... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkdcYlOn5M ... And then I wasted time watching other Madtv skits...productive day of homework.

Wisco

After spending a couple days in Wisconsin I have learned a few things about the state and the people in it...

1. The people enjoy the word "literally" and use it whenever they can...
2. Its very hilly.
3. Once your travel north of Milwaukee, you enter the middle of nowhere. (that part made me feel at home)
4. It smells like cow poop everywhere.
5. Finally, there are some great people that make #4 completely bearable.

So here is to America's dairy land. miss ya already.