My Fathers House

Today at lunch I was reading my Bible and my friend randomly grabbed the Bible out of my hands. He placed the bookmark where I had been reading and flipped through the pages until he found 2 Timothy. He turned a couple more pages and pointed at the top of a page.

"This is my favorite Bible passage", he said.

Slightly irritated, but more interested than anything, I looked where his grubby finger rested on the page. It was 2 Timothy 2:11-13, it read:

If we died with him,
we must also live with him;
If we endure,
we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
he will also disown us;
if we are faithless,
he will remain faithful,
for he cannot disown himself.

I was hooked. I reread this about five times and thought about it some more.

If we died with Jesus in our hearts we must live with him in heaven. If we endure this life full of sin we will also reign with him in heaven. If we disown Jesus he will also disown us. If we don't have faith Jesus still will because he can't disown himself.

This is the relationship between God and man in a nutshell. God wants us to be with Him but He wants us to love Him too. He loves us unconditionaly and we know it, but if we love Him we need to prove it. We need to live our lives for God and tell others about Him if we are to get into heaven. Would you let someone into your house if they weren't your friend? Of course not. That's why we need to have a relationship with God if he is to let us into His house. I'm on my way to His house, what about you?

The Train of Life

I have been so wiped out lately. I'm behind on schoolwork and I feel like I'm behind on everything else as well. I have been keeping up with the train of life but I get so exhausted I just need to rest. No matter how hard I try keep struggling and I know if I stumble I will have work even harder to keep up. I keep asking myself when the train will stop and the only answer I have been able to come up with is never.

I have also been very spiritually wiped out. I don't have that feeling of how much I desperately need God. I need to feel His overpowering love wash over me although I know it already is. I feel like I am asleep and I need desperately to wake up to God. I want to feel the urge to witness, to pray with people, and to do anything I can for God. He is my everything, without Him I would be nothing. Lost. Blind. I pray that I will soon once again feel His presence with me.

Got Fruit?

A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of his vineyard, "For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?"

"Sir", the man replied, "leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down."(Luke 13:6-9, NIV)


This is a parable Jesus told his disciples in the book of Luke. I had to reread it a couple times before I finally understood it. God is the man who owns the vineyard. You and I are the person that takes care of the tree. The tree is our Christian faith. If our faith doesn't bear fruit and thrive, what good is it? What good is our Christian faith if we don't show it? If you don't make it obvious to everyone that you are Christian, you would be just as good not even being Christian. God gives us a second chance to bear fruit, just like in the parable. This blog is about me using my second chance. I have fruit, do you?

What Would You Do?

This week the school schedule has been really messed up because of 27 week testing so we have gone to lunch with different classes than we usually do. Yesterday I was walking toward the lunch room with a friend of mine I had known for more than a year. He had a lunch box so I asked him to take my Bible where we would be eating while I was in the lunch line. It turned out we were eating outside that day, so my friend left my Bible on one of the lunch tables inside and went outside with everyone else. Because of my A.D.D. I didn't realize he had put it there and walked outside to eat with him. When I started to pray for my food he didn't even acknowledge I was doing it, he just kept talking to the kid beside him. I ate my lunch and then went inside to get my Bible.

The next day I ate with a different class and asked a different person I had known for a little more than a month with a lunch box to hold my Bible while I was in line. When he found out we were eating outside he didn't leave it on the table, he took it outside with him. When I took my tray outside to eat with him he prayed with me.

Is it just me or was the friend I had known for more than a year afraid to hold a Bible or even pray, opposed to the other friend I had known for less than a couple months who did both of those things without hesitation. It never ceases to surprise me what people will do when it comes to putting faith in practice.

Taking Up My Cross

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it."
(Luke 9:23-24, NIV)

Think about that for a minute. This is what Jesus tells us in the book of Luke. A lot of people have read it, but how many of those people have listened? I am always listening for God to tell me something I can do for Him. Even when He gives me direction sometimes I get scared and say no. I let God down. I hate letting God down. I become so ashamed of myself sometimes and it eats me up. Every living creature does God's will except the human race, because we have the guts to say "no". I need to lose my life for Him. I can't afford to say no.

Mission Not So Impossible

Lately God has opened my eyes to the possibility of becoming a missionary. I have never realy thought about it before. When God told me to rewrite the essay he just sparked that idea in me. The more I have been thinking about it the more I like it. I can still be a writer and a missionary at the same time, it just gives me more to write about. I can learn different languages and learn about the world while I'm at it. It just keeps getting better and better.

The Change In Plans

This is the essay God told me to write:

Africa is full of countries with a culture and history all it’s own, Liberia is one of the many countries in Africa. I would want to live in Liberia because of the refugees and the vast differences in economy and culture.

I would want to live in Liberia because of all the refugees fleeing from Western Cote Ivory into Liberia. There is fighting happening in Western Cote Ivory. These people have led very rough lives and seen things that you and I can’t even begin to fathom. The sad thing is that some of those people don’t know the Lord. To make things even worse the refugees are arriving by the thousands only to find that Liberia is having trouble providing food for the refugees that are already there. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a whole lot of people that need God in their lives, and I wish I had the liberty to witness to at least one of the refugees. The two reasons that we were created are for us to draw to the awesomeness of God and to make Him known throughout the earth. That’s what I plan to do.

The GDP of Liberia is 1.6 billion, that seems like a lot, right? Now look at the United States GDP, how about 14.72 trillion. There is obviously a huge difference in these numbers. This is another reason I would like to live in Liberia. Jesus said again and again to leave everything behind and follow him, riches, family, everything. A lower GDP means lower income, which I am totally fine with, I have no desire to be wealthy because then I would be focusing on my worldly possessions instead of God. Jesus said it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel into the eye of a needle (which is pretty hard, by the way). Devoting my life to God will be hard but it is definitely worth it. Between a mansion and a kingdom in heaven I choose the kingdom.

Sharing the gospel with Liberian refugees and living with lower income is not what the usual middle school kid wants. It’s not about what I want, it’s about what God wants for me. God wants the best for all of us, even if it doesn’t make any sense to us. What God wants for me is definitely what I need.

This is what I would have written:

Africa is full of countries with a culture and history all its own, Liberia is one of the many countries in Africa. I don't want to live in Liberia because of the vast differences in economy and current issues.

I would not want to live in Liberia because of all the refugees fleeing from Western Cote Ivory, so the people living there are fleeing into Liberia. Ivoirian refugees are arriving in Liberia by the thousands. Several thousand refugees have arrived already and still 5000 more are expected to arrive. Liberia is struggling to provide all the refugees with things like shelter and water. I would not want to be in the middle of all the chaos.

Another reason I would not want to live in Liberia is because of their lower GDP in comparison to the United States. Liberia's GDP is 1.6 billion but the United States GDP is14.72 trillion. That's a huge difference! If I were to live in Liberia I would get less income than I am used to. If I got less income it would be harder to pay a mortgage or a cell phone bill. If I ever decide to move back to the United States it would take me longer to gather the money to do so. It would take me longer to gather the money because of the differences in Liberia's money worth compared to the United States. Those are a couple of the reasons I would not want to live in Liberia.

Moving To Liberia

In school I am writing an essay in social studies about Liberia. I'm supposed to write about why or why not I would want to live there. I didn't really like this assignment to begin with because I had to make a decision in five minutes that in real life would take me days or weeks to decide. So I really didn't have time to ponder whether I would like to live in Liberia or not because I only had a class period or two to get my rough draft done. Then God made things (a lot) more interesting. I had chose to write my essay about why I wouldn't like to live in Liberia, just as I was about to type my rough draft that I had written on paper God told me to write about why I would want to live in Liberia. He told me that I could witness to people there and teach more people about Him. So I abandoned my rough draft and started typing my "final" draft about why I would like to live in Liberia. What God told me to do went against all my instincts as a writer. This essay is a HUGE part of my grade in that class. If God hadn't put those ideas in my head I never would have even thought about doing something like that, but I'm glad I did. God sure knows His stuff.