Category: Webs

With Or Without You.

With Or Without You.

If you could slow down an action that usually zooms by, or speed up an event that normally drags on, which would you choose, and why?

This is such a bold and thought-provoking question, or is it? I am a believer in the eternal soul. I am a believer in the notion that Jesus Christ has already paid my entrance fee into Heaven. He’s an awesome lawyer- Jesus Christ has already said on my behalf,  ‘He is forgiven! Case dismissed!!’

Eternity has no use for the constraints of time. It always was, and it always will be. No slowing down, no speeding up. It just simply is. Some things are true whether we believe them or not. I am also a believer in that time is irrelevant, we have this moment. The past ones cannot be changed and the future ones are not promised. What if it takes me another three minutes to finish typing out this post, but within two minutes a life-altering event I don’t see coming, like a car out of control comes careening through this room, or a speeding bullet, or a health problem, like a heart attack or aneurysm takes place before I hit publish? It is possible, right? What if? No moment is ever promised!!

 So, why are we so concerned with slowing down the good moments and speeding up the so-called bad ones? Time is irrelevant, my friends. Each day we are given 86,400 seconds at the beginning of a day. At the end of a day we have all used all those seconds. A large number of them poorly, I might add. 

At the middle of tomorrow’s day I will reach the milestone of 40 years old. Will I still be this side of Heaven when 2:54pm Minnesota time arrives on February 26th, 2016? Who knows? I don’t. I sure hope so, but we really don’t know. 

Why are we worried about trivializing life so much that we want to speed up or slow down any of it? Take the good times, take the bad times, it’s all just moments in life. And we all owe a death, all of us! I refuse to spend one second worrying about speeding up or slowing down any of it. It’s all just borrowed time that belongs to Eternity. 

The real question to be concerned about is not when it is coming, or if it is coming. I will not be concerned with hanging on to moments in this life that (in the grand scheme of things) really are trivial.

 The real question to be concerned about is where we will spend all of time when this life and all of its moments are done. With God or without Him? Time is irrelevant because we don’t know how much we have left. Don’t waste time trying to change the speed of things. Find your purpose and live for that, with all you have left. And I assure you, you will never find your purpose in this life without looking into something greater than yourself. With or without you, this world will keep on turning. Your hands are tied. Make it count. 

In His Grip

In His Grip

How is the year shaping up for you so far? Have your predictions come true, or did you have to face a curve ball or two?(Thank you, BasicallyBeyondBasic, for the timely prompt suggestions!)

2016 by no stretch of the imagination has been a dream for me, but not really a nightmare either. I have experienced the death of a friend and an infection that I didn’t pay attention to for far too long that meant to take me out. But, God is stronger than any experience that can come against me and His purpose will be fulfilled! 

I have learned to not really make solid, set in stone, no exchanges type of plans. Plans never go as we choose. My wedding day, I forgot to get to the courthouse the day before AND the day of to pick up the marriage license!! We are still married almost three years later and we have a funny story. We had planned to arrive in Montana to see my wife’s mom and dad, who has Alzheimer’s and cancer, three days before we actually got here. And now that we are here, we are spending another day here because of a storm rolling through. 

A famous musician once wrote, ‘Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long.’ The fun part, for me, is we can’t see the entire highway. Part of it may not be there anymore, or it may be detoured because of construction. That means we get to learn a new way to go! You may have travelled that road a time or two, but life will always throw curveballs at us all. 

I didn’t plan on my friend dying, I didn’t plan on spending five days in the hospital, but those events happened. 2016 has thrown some curveballs my way, and I am positive more are to come. But with my faith and my God, I know I am “In His Grip” as my brother has always said and I have adopted this saying. He’s got the whole world in His Hands and knows the deepest parts of the journey for each one of us. No, 2016 has not gone as planned, but I know it all has been for a purpose. 

Psycho Social. 

Psycho Social. 

No, I’m not talking about the song from Slipknot, although, I do like their ballad Snuff. I am talking about the American society and how a large number of popular films these days are the thriller/horror film genre. 

I was scoping out our local Redbox in Walmart tonight and I realized, yet again, there is a high number of horror/thriller genre movies for rent in there. Last week I watched Pay The Ghost with Nicholas Cage, interesting film that gets into the mystery genre. I would highly recommend it if slasher films are not your thing.  

 
(Image provided by Google Images). 

I have found it interesting that these type of films have been increasing in production over the past five or so years. Has our society become so interesting being scared that these movies are on the rise? Is there another reason? Could it be a ‘Heart’ issue? Are we turning away from God? These are questions I have when I see things that are truly not from Him on the rise. I would be interested in anyone else’s thoughts on this as well. Let’s talk about it. 

Inspiration IS All Around Us!!!

Inspiration IS All Around Us!!!

I have recently become a huge fan of Bob Proctor. He was involved in the film The Secret and he has a Facebook page that talks about all sorts of ways to reach our full potential even though we truly have no idea what that even is yet!! 

I just finished watching one of these videos and I had to chuckle because there is a lady in this promotional video for a movie coming out and she is talking about potential and she brings up the old saying, the sky’s the limit!! Folks, if your dreams, your goals, your aspirations are only reaching sky level, YOU ARE NOT GOING FAR ENOUGH!!!!! 

As soon as you leave Earth’s atmosphere, the sky disappears. You are now entering the inner part of outer space. Like the character in  Armegeddon says, ‘This is only the beginning of space! We haven’t even reached OUTER SPACE yet!!’ 

So my challenge for you today is, don’t reach for the sky, don’t reach for the stars, reach for somewhere or something that hasn’t even been discovered yet!! The only way to find something new is to move as far away from what you already know as possible. 

I have no idea why this post hit my heart, but I pray right now, in Jesus’ Name that whomever needs to read this finds their way to this post. Please, if you feel someone needs to reach beyond where they think they can and you feel this message will inspire that, please share this post. I love you all! We are all meant to go further than we have. Reach for places not even discovered yet and you will find a creator willing to guide you.

From My Corner To Yours.

From My Corner To Yours.

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

We live in a media-saturated world. These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone under the age of 20 who isn’t strapped into a cell phone, or iPod, iPad or MP3 player. Verbal communication has given way to text-only. Hardly anyone ever speaks on the phone any longer because now it is a computer. I am guilty as charged, your honor. It wasn’t always this way. The definition of progress has meant a chasm of growth in separation. 

I am part of the odd generation. We remember a time when all we had was Oregon Trail on our Apple IIe during computer class in the early-80’s. We were in school, and most of us even graduated high school, or God-forbid college, without the internet!! Say it ain’t so!!! It’s true young ones. The Internet didn’t really rage on to the scene until the mid-90’s!! 

My life without a computer, in its simplest terms, looks a lot like my childhood and how I wish I could live my life now. If you ask my wife she will say I am flat out lying, but even husbands have these secret places of desires of living out in the wilderness they never tell their wives about. It is engrained in our nature. Well, it was. Now we have a generation of entitled people who want everything handed to them. 

Life without computers for them? Ha!! They wouldn’t have a clue how to research a library, possibly keep a checkbook and again, God-forbid, one day will not know how to go to a store and pick out an item they see on the shelf. They won’t know how to write. They won’t know how to communicate without a keyboard or a screen. Progress???!!! Ha! Not to me!! 

Lately I have been on a serious kick, I mean almost an obsession, with survivalist shows. Man vs. Wild, Dual Survival, Survival School, life in Alaska I have watched all these shows over the past few months! It’s almost like God is preparing me to live that way, even as a disabled male. A fellow blogger friend said don’t count us disabled people out just because we are disabled. We can even do the hard stuff. 

I feel a pull within my soul to go hardcore!! And that may even mean writing journals by hand. That’s how they used to do it. Lewis And Clark, (you young kids reading this can Google them in a minute), they WALKED shore to shore of the oceans here in America over 200 years ago!! And other countries? They have histories even richer and broader than that! I am talking thousands of years!!! And in today’s world, we sit on our phones (if we can still call them that) and we have the entire internet in the palm of our hand. 

You want to know the greatest thing in the universe? He holds this entire universe in the palm of His hand!! He is God. He sent His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to Earth for all of us! He sent the ideas for technology to human beings to create. Imagine a world where one of them said, ‘Nope! I will not create this technology! We will not advance!’ We would all still be writing by hand waiting weeks to receive a letter from family. We would all be so distant from one another. Technology has brought us closer than ever before and we have allowed it to tear us apart. 

I have so many things that I wish to share with the world. I want to document when I first make a fire without the use of a match or lighter. I want to live off the land and share it with the world. I want to experience a life where my computer/phone is not accessed. But I also want the technology available to come back and write to all of you from the viewpoint of a disabled male born with Spina Bifida and say, ‘I did it, so there is no reason you can’t!’ Get out and live life, but share it! Life without computers? Sure. I could do it. But I also like being able to reach the world from my own little corner of it. 

I.M.P.A.C.T.

I.M.P.A.C.T.

Where are you making positive actions come true today? We are not to only be hearers of The Word, but doers also. We cannot just simply pray or wish for good things to happen in the world, we must act today! 

1. Smile

2. Say Hello

3. Walk with someone

4. Talk with someone

5. Write a letter

6. Write a blog

7. Buy someone lunch 

8. Read to someone 

9. Tell about your history

10. Teach something new

And these are only 10 ways to make a positive impact on the world today. There are as many ways to make a positive impact on the world as there are people. We all have different thoughts, different ways to do things. Don’t stifle someone’s way of doing something just because it is different than yours (unless it is damaging to the world in any way). 

Earlier today I sat at home thinking, ‘I have no inspiration today’. I clearly was wrong! YOU are my inspiration! The world! Events. History. Our future. Where I want things to go. We all want change, but we can’t simply wish it into existence! We must act and we must begin our acts of positive change begin today! 

Inspiration Is All Around Us

Inspiration Is All Around Us

Because the NightAre you a night owl or are you the early bird? What’s your most productive time of day? When do you do your best work?

If you have followed my blog for any amount of time greater than a week you will notice a large portion of my posts come after 10pm at night (here in Minnesota anyway). My wife is asleep at that point and I have the living room to myself so my inspirations, which typically have been collecting throughout the day, can collide with my fingers into thoughts on the page of my blog.

Where do I find inspiration? An easier question to answer would be where DON’T I find inspiration? As I type this I am listening to the smooth Christmas classics and jazzy tunes on 96.7 KKRM KRAM radio here in Montevideo. You can listen too!! It’s online. Www.kram967.com click on the TuneIn Radio App to listen!!

But seriously, I find inspiration all over. A friend once told me, ‘I don’t believe in God. I don’t see him anywhere.’ I started laughing uncontrollably. I see God and His fingerprints everywhere! And this season we celebrate the greatest gift He ever sent to us, His Son, Jesus Christ. The King Of Kings born in the lowest of conditions. Everyone shut Him out before He was even on Earth.

He would be on Earth another thirty-three years. Ministering for the last three years. And He has been revealed as The King Of Kings ever since.

I was inspired by the song, ‘Mary, Did You Know?’ Yesterday. She was visited by an angel who told her these things would happen. But, Mary was a human being given the gift of being the mother to Jesus. She didn’t ask for it. The Bible says ‘she kept all these things and pondered them in her heart’. Did Mary know? I don’t believe she did until she saw the things happen. That is Faith. Belief in things not yet seen.

I have never been outside of the United States, but I know there are other countries out there. Why? How could I know when I have never seen them? Because other people I know and trust have seen many places and countries and they have told me the stories of their travels. I have faith they were not lying to me.

I am not lying to you today. Jesus Christ came to Earth and He is the only way to Heaven. Your works, what you do to others, what job you have, rich or poor, young or old, healthy or sick and close to death, these things matter not. Jesus died and rose for you! And this season we celebrate His birth.

Some say, ‘but, Jesus was born in April or May, because that is when shepherds would be out tending their flocks.’ So what! The key is, Jesus came to Earth (yes, The Bible says He Came to Earth, not born) that means He was somewhere else first. I come into the kitchen from the living room of our home. I wasn’t born into it.

See! Inspiration is all around us!! I just wrote an entire post at 11am Minnesota time. Are you missing inspiration? It can come at any time and in any form, Just like Jesus! His Holy Spirit still resides in the Earth and in the hearts of believers. What we as believers need to do is be the true spirit of Jesus and the true spirit of Christmas can be seen by all the world through us. Merry Christmas to all! And to all a lifetime of inspiration you will share with the world.