Severity of God

God has been speaking to me about being more serious about Him. We live our lives in our own world, making God the 2ND most important thing, when we ourselves are the first. This is so wrong, and ungodly. God should always be number one in our lives.
In the bible it says that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. I believe that all to often we are silent. God has given us unending opportunities to be a witness to the people around us, our coworkers, schoolmates, people that check us out in the grocery store. Why don't we speak up and tell these people about the most amazing gift ever given?? Because we are too prideful and don't have the fear of God but the fear of man. We are to fear God more than our own parents. When your parents say something, you generally get up and go and do what they say. But when God tells us to get up and go talk to that person we think " oh, someone else will talk to them" or "That wasn't God, it was just a passing thought." Why do we think that we can ignore what God says, the being that can send you to hell, that has your life in His hands but we feel that we MUST obey our parents instantly. I'm not saying to disobey your parents, but why do we fear them and obey them better than God?? It's SO wrong! We are wanting people to get saved, and we wonder when they are not getting saved, what is going on?? Yea well, its us guys! We have to intercede for the lost. How I think of it as is a bridge that it broken. The lost on one side and Jesus on the other side. We are in the middle we intercede for their soul.
intercede :
to act or interpose in behalf of someone in difficulty or trouble, as by pleading or petition
to attempt to reconcile differences between two people or groups; mediate.

We stand in the middle, fill in the gap so that our friends and family that are lost can get to Jesus. If we aren't praying and crying for mercy for their souls, who is going to pray for those lost souls!!! We need to be serious about the lost, we need to have the burden that Christ has for the lost. Sometimes we read the bible and just read it, but not take it seriously. When the bible says don't lie, we don't lie. When the bible says pray for the lost, PRAY FOR THE LOST!!! It's not just suggesting it, it's saying it for a reason!! Something else I believe we need to be more serious and helpful for the kingdom of God is to be encouragers. The bible says to encourage one another. When your out chillin with your friends, heck yes!! joke around have fun, but also, the center of your lives is Christ, then He should show up in your conversations sometime. So while you and your friends are together, encourage each other, tell each other what your going through, what God is doing in your lives. I can tell you from my own life, that when I talk to my friends about things I am struggling with and what God is doing in me, I am strengthened. They give me counsel and help to strive for more. When they talk about what God is doing in them, I am so encouraged to see God working in people's lives. When I talk to Payton, we have so much fun talking, not only because we're like best friends, but because God is the center of both of our lives and our conversations almost always go to Christ and something He's showing us or just something about God. When Christ is the center, it will be the center of you converstation. I am always encouraged and come out stronger from that convo then when I went in. I just praise God for Godly friends, I feel very blessed. So just to encourage and challenge you guys, Be serious about God and make a point to talk to your friends about God when you get together, encourage each other, help each other out!!
God Bless

I'm Weird!! tehe

Ok so most everyone who knows me knows that I am really really strange. It is very funny sometimes the strange things I do. One thing that makes me and my family laugh is when I randomly awake from slumber and say something. Let my explain. I was sleeping on the futon and my older sister and yonger sister where going back and forth on something high sugar to eat. My younger sister keeps coming in with different things she thinks the older may want. I'm like dead asleep and my little sister comes in with a clementine, and says, "what about an arangoatane or whatever these are?" I wake out of almost dead sleep and put my arm out and say, " I want it!" So my little sister hands me the clementine and I was way to tired to peel the thing, plus I don't have any nails at the moment so I ask her to peel it. By this time my mom and older sister are laughing at the fact that I just woke up out of nowhere and the I'm to lazy to peel it. And I'm like hey, I just woke up my arms aren't working give me a brake, and the little one didn't care at all to do it for me. While she was peeling it though she kept dropping the peels on the floor so she gave up and just dropped all the peels on the carpet and my mom was like grr.
The other weird thing about me is words. I love learning new and strange words. At the moment my favorite word is duvet! Appareantly it means quilt! You pronounce it dOO vAy. Now seriously everyone how cool of a word is that?? I mean really. I don't think I'll ever go back to saying quilt or blanket. Old Jed's left the family tehe

The Sermon

On sunday my pastor was reflecting on the past year of 2008. I don't know what the rest of the church got from it but I would like to say what I got from it. First thing, he told us what he had written to some place, what our mission statement was. He said that our mission statement as a church is to raise up a generation (church) who is fervantly in love with the Lord. I think that that should be the mission statement of our lives. God put us here to seek his name and then to witness and save the lost. We ourselves should be fervantly in love with the Lord and then secondly trying to get others to follow Christ and do the same. I've been working on the me part but not so much the others part this past year. As we came into the new year I made it a goal of mine to be more of a witness. And even though I may be homeschooled I have so many opportunities to witness to others. I go to school in the morning, I go to work, I am out in the world plenty to, at least, show Christ's love to others.
He then started talking about tithing. The bible says to pay ten percent of your income to tithe. It also says we should pay offerings. Another goal of mine this new year is to start paying offerings. My pastor said, and I agree 100%, that when we tithe and give offerings, we are very blessed. There is one family in our church that I know are faithful tithers and offerers, not only of their money but also of their time. If you need help you can always count on them to help you out, unless they're doing something they have no way out of, like traveling or something like that. You can clearly see that they are a blessed family, that is if you know them haha. I have seen though in my peers, and in people in our church that the people that tithe and give offerings are very blessed. My pastor said that he doesn't want to hang out with people who are not tithers, becuase the bible says these people are cursed. I mean if you aren't saved, he'll of course talk to you and show you what your missing out on, but if you claim to be a christian and do not tithe, get on it! Tithing is a very important thing. Along with praying and reading the word daily.
He also talked about who our first love should be. If you're a christian and don't know the answer to that, my goodness check your heart! We need to have Christ as our first love. In everything we do and say it should show Christ, gotta say, haven't been doing that. But he was talking about getting his two sons into shooting games or something like that, and he said that nothing will get in the way of church. If there's a tournement on a sunday, his boys will not be there because they are going to be in God's house that day. How often do we put God on the number one of our list of important things. When things come up do we say, OO well its just this one sunday, or it's just youth group? God needs to be the number one and nothing should be able or have the power to get in the way of that. And if it does then we need to rethink just how important it is to us. God needs to be on throne of our life and in every part of it. My youth leader uses this anology: If someone were to stalk us and put pictures to fill an entire room full of our life in the past six months, what would they be able to say about us? Would they say: They clearly love Christ, or would they say: They're just like me and there's nothing different about them. If they watched the movies you watched, or the music you listened to, would it show Christ or would it show the world? I know for me that I've lost focus on God a little bit. I am now striving to get closer to Him because He is worth all my time and effort. Think about your life in the past six months. What would they say about you?

Interesting

12 Now I would have you know, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel;
13 so that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout the whole praetorian guard, and to all the rest;
14 and that most of the brethren in the Lord, being confident through my bonds, are more abundantly bold to speak the word of God without fear.
15 Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will:
16 the one do it of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel;
17 but the other proclaim Christ of faction, not sincerely, thinking to raise up affliction for me in my bonds.
18 What then? only that in every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and therein I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.

-Philippians 1:12-18

I find this a very interesting passage. Paul and Timothy are in prison and they start talking about how it has given people a boldness to speak the gospel. They also say that not all these people are doing it for the right reason. Although they are not speaking the gospel for the right reason they are still rejoicing. They rejoice because even though the hearts may not be right the gospel is still getting out there and being spread. And they continue on later to say that this is going to help them to get released from prison. If we God's people aren't willing to go and with a good heart share the gospel He might end up using others to spread it even though they may not have the right motives. I'm not quite sure if those are the right words but in general, what I'm trying to say is that we need to get out there and start spreading the word people! The end times are here and the people of the world need us to tell them about the Creator and what they are missing out on. My youth leader says that we have the greatest secret why keep it to ourselves. I always think of it this way; I use on my face rubbing alcohol, it works really well and really helps to clear up my face. I know a lot of people who have used it and it works great! If i meet someone who may have bad acne or something and i have a solution of how to get rid of it or help there face tremendously, then why not tell them. Sure, maybe they'll be offended that i mentioned it because it makes many people self-conscious. But i have a great thing that will help them! Why not tell them. I have a great God and a great secret that will help their face and their soul! We need to let it out and tell the people the best secret ever!!

Knapsacking Backscratcher

Ok so this story comes from, big shocker, my family!! One night the whole family was over for Thanksgiving I believe was the occasion, and we all decided to play the wonderful game APPLES TO APPLES!!! So, to clue you in my youngest brother is 9. We allowed the youngest to join us old folks in this very fun game of words. So it was the youngsters turn to judge the cards. Everyone puts down there cards ( I have no idea what the word was on the green card), and he starts going through them and saying them out loud because that's what we do to get a good laugh. He gets the card Napoleon Bonaparte. Would you like to know how he pronounced it?? At first he says Napoleon Backstratcher?? We all giggle to ourselves. But then he rereads it and says Knapsacking Backscratcher. LOL ok I couldn't hold in the laugther from that, it was just too much for me to handle. It was the most cute attempt to say that man's name. We then went out for ice cream after this. We went to cold stone creamery(YUM!!). My older brother bought some mountain dew the red kind I think. My lil brother is most definatly not allowed to have that. But of course the great big brother allowed him to have some. Yea my mom almost ate him lol. Also he ate the rest of the sugar bowl another big NONO!! Also that night my older brother decided that he was in the mood to wrestle someone so of course me being the tough one, he decides to demolish me. I lost miserably even with the help of my sister and a friend. I was on his legs and they got the rest of him. Except that didn't help anything cuz he lifted us like we were nothing!! GAR!! You know how frustrating that is to me. I thought I could beat him up (ok actaully I really don't think that because he's a marine and I know he could eat me if he wanted to tehe) Another part of that day, at least I think it was that day lol, I was driving to go get this wonderful big brother of mine, so I park and get out and walk to his apartment to get him. When I get back in the car and start backing out guess what I hit? Yea I hit his roomates car!! Yea I was really upset and so was everyone else. My mom totally freaked out at me. My brother and sister were pretty calm about it but now my older sister like dreads everytime I drive with her (which isn't very boosting to my driving skills thank you very much!) My older brother I pretty much never drive with though because he has a stick shift so it doesn't matter because I can't drive those in the first place it pretty much sucks lol. And my mom says she feels very scared when she drives with me again thanks for the confidence guys!! When I drive with my mom though, at the moment, like when she does it, this is the most frustrating thing she does, but when I think about it it's really funny, when I get to close to the curb or something she like totally freaks and like flayels her arms to "show me" that I'm too close. Again at the moment this is the most stressful and obnoxious thing I can think of to do but that's how she gets through to me I guess?? I don't know. So there's my little excerpt on my life. And also a little blog for those who have been waiting for one from me for like EVER!! lol sorry guys for the wait.

My Family!!

SOOO my family. lol, What a hoot and a hillabeans. So my oldest sister is going to be a teacher for like pre-k through 3 or something and she works at a daycare and so she is always getting little kids music like folk music and umm the Wiggles and other stuff. Well me being all sarcastic like make fun of it thoroughly. So we're driving home and we're listening to this new CD she borrowed from the library Peter, Paul and Mommy. And it's like this really dumb song about umm like birds or something. So its all like rhyming and what not and soo I start making up really dumb rhymes that make noo sense at all and start making it sound like the song. Let me just lol. I am soo funny. So of course my family joins in and then we are driving down town and laughing making up really funny rhymes and my mom's like "We should roll down the window's" and my oldest sister is " Like NOOOO" lol it was soooo funny. Then there was this other song about some dude who like wants this girls to liek himn or something and so he's all like sad and depressed. And there's this part were it goes mercy me and rhymes with it and my lil bro sings it at the top of his lungs and its soooo histerical lol. I was laughing soo hard. I luv my family SOO much but somtimes as everyone knows they can get on ur nerves of course. But when that happens I try to be really goofy then get yelled at so yeah that doesn't always work out lol. But life goes on and yes ok I'm done lol.
Ellie

Work

Ok just want to say I pretty much luv my new job. I work at subway. It is a pretty easy job not stressful at all really I think anyways. Idk if my co-workers think so. I luv my co-workers they are so fun. The one guy I work with is really funny the other day he accidentally sprayed himself in the eye with sanitizer it was really funny he was like " awww crap that really hurt!" It was really funny. It was kinda my fault though that is happened. I spilled some lettuce and he swept it out of the place we keep the lettuce and he needed to sanitize it cuz that's just gross even though they are in bins but whatever. So he had to go clean it out lol. Then today I asked if there was anything I needed to do and my boss said to go check the dinning room and the guy said that he had already done it and my boss turns to me and says " go check the dinning room" lol. He doesn't always do things very well. I need to teach him a thing or two lol jk jk. So I really like my job and its fun. So there's the DL of my job tehe.
Ellie