Posts (page 2)
The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word adoption as:
“To take into one’s family through legal means and raise as one’s own child.”
Jaime and I have been exploring adoption for a few months. We have looked at International Adoption, domestic adoption, and domestic fostering. Currently we are working to narrow down the direction God wants us to move in. We both feel deeply compelled to adopt a child. At this point we are not sure the direction that we would like to go in. Should we adopt a child that needs a family here in the US? Maybe focus on a child in Asia? Maybe an infant? Maybe a toddler? Maybe…. well the maybes can continue.
I would like to ask anyone who may be reading this to be praying for Jaime and I. That we will be on the same page and follow the direction God wants us to go in. Adoption is a big step and I can relate to a degree with the situation that some of these children are in. ( I am half adopted. Maybe I should try and find a better term for my situation?) So I feel a connection with children who have been abondoned and need a Mom and a Dad. Jaime feels more of a pull to help children who have medical needs. And honestly that idea scares the stuff right out of me. So we are not 100% on the same page. The good news is that we are both in the same book. So please pray for us, that we will get to the same page.
Another factor for my desire to adopt is that I am now 29 and would like to be a Father near the age of 30 if at all possible.
Thank you for your prayers.
This video has taken a while to get online. Through the use of a converter called Super DVD Ripper and http://www.veoh.com we are now able to provide the full memorial video for Gregory Steven Rowland.
I was doing some reading and flipped back into Ezekiel. I landed on Chapter 43 so I decided to read this chapter once more. And I caught something that I didn't catch on my initial read through. A verse that I think is very important. Especially when someone asks why there is so much detail regarding the temple or the tabernacle, or even the laws given to Israel.
"Son of man, describe to the people of Israel the Temple I have shown you, so they will be ashamed of all their sins. Let them study its plan, and they will be ashamed of what they have done. Describe to them all the specifications of the Temple including its entrances and exits and everything else about it. Tell them about its decrees and laws. Write down all these specifications and decrees as they watch so they will be sure to remember and follow them. And this is the basic law of the Temple: absolute holiness! The entire top of the mountain where the Temple is built is holy. Yes, this is the basic law of the Temple."
-- Ezekiel 43:10-12
The words that grabbed me were "And this is the basic law of the Temple: absolute holiness! The entire top of the mountain where the Temple is built is holy. Yes, this is the basic law of the Temple."
God is telling Ezekiel what the purpose is for his greatly detailed instructions regarding the Temple. Absolute, holiness.
We make flawed things. God makes perfect things. So instead of saying make a marvelous temple he gives detailed instructions from the dimensions to the decorations. This is His temple. And He is Holy. So all of the instructions are to point us to God's absolute holiness.
Since my read through the Bible began I have been asked about the lists of directions in the Old Testament to Israel and what their purpose or application is.
Their purpose is to show us the 'Absolute Holiness' of God. And when we see His Absolute Holiness it is clear that we fall short of Him. The rules, regulations, and temple guidelines are all to show us God. God is Holy, actually he is Absolutely Holy. A man may become Holy but can a man be Absolutely Holy? No, we always fall short of that.
So what does Holy mean? Essentially, it means to be set apart. When someone accepts Christ as their Lord and Savior they become Holy to God, meaning they are set apart.
I always picture some small stones on a table. A hand comes in and organizes some of the stones into a different area on the table. These stones have been set apart from the others. They are still stones but they are different because of their location. When we accept Jesus Christ we are set apart in that we are now placed in God's hand of salvation. We are still human, but our location is different. This is what makes us Holy, not our 'good deeds'. But God is saying that He is more than just Holy, he is 'Absolutely Holy'. He is set apart in a way that we can't be. Because He is the hand moving the stones from one part of the table to another. For the stones, they could never become the hand that changes their location. So we are like stones that have been designated as special by the One who is far more special and Holy that we could ever imagine.
Often we link being 'good' to being 'holy' and forget the it is much simpler than that. Being Holy means being set apart by God. And that is done through Jesus Christ. It is after God makes us Holy that He begins transforming us into being 'good'. If it were the other way around there would be no hope for any of us. We would be rocks on a table struggling to move to the other side. And since rocks can't move, that would be a very difficult feat, in fact it would be impossible.
Jeff Bristow posted a photo:
I have been working on a network of sites that will all point to thebristows.com and share content. Currently this network has the following sites:
thebristows.com
jeffbristow.com
facebook
tumblr.com
vox.com
ziki.com
The idea behind this network is to have a bunch of sites that all have the same content (my blog postings), with very little work.
Currently this is how it works.
I can make a post at jeffbristow.com and it will propogate to thebristows.com .
From thebristows.com the post will propogate to facebook , tumblr, vox, and ziki.
This means I make one post and within a 24 hour period my content gets moved to at least six different sites.
So why have I done this?
Hmmm.... well why not?
(this post is even the first test post to see if this network of sites is truly working as expected.)
I just read an article about a man who strapped helium balloons to his lawn chair, sat down and floated 195 miles in 9 hours.
Source
This is a man with a lot of guts. Lawn chair, water, balloons and a bb gun. I think thats all he took with him.
As I was reading this I was imagining what it must have been like to be floating above the ground on top of a lawn chair. It certainly must have been once of the most amazing things he has ever experienced. And he was able to experience this because he didn’t let the idea that “This is crazy!”, be his dominant thought.
I have no idea if this man is a Christian, but I began thinking about the ideas and things God may give us. Ezekiel was asked to do some ‘crazy’ things, and some would even say Daniel as well (to not bow down to the ruthless leader of the world). And I think maybe more often than we want to recognize God gives us ‘crazy’ ideas. Like ‘call up that person you haven’t talked to your entire lifetime’, or ’start that ministry, don’t worry about the fact that you have no money’, or ‘tell them about Christ’. Are these crazy? I don’t think so, but when we get these ideas and we know they are from God, do we take action on them? I want to be more like the man in the lawn chair floating through the sky. I want to grab hold of what God is asking of me and follow through with it, no matter how crazy it may seem.
So I lift my can of diet coke to the man with the balloons for teaching me a lesson about following God, even though I doubt this was his intention.
Today has some special numbers in the date. Droves of people have gone to Vegas to be married by men dressed up as Elvis. ( yeah, I know thats really weird) Since it is July 7th of 2007 people figure this is a lucky number since in Vegas 777 is a very lucky number on the slot machines. Today I also had two friends get married in Iowa. Trisha and Ben. But they were not getting married on this date for extra luck in their marriage or anything having to do with ‘Vegas Odds’. They are both Christian and were getting married this summer and there just happened to be a Saturday in July that could have them being married on 777. A very good number in scripture, essentially meaning perfection. And it should be a really easy anniversery date for Ben to remember.
So how did I spend this ‘perfect’ day?
Well, Jaime worked last night so she was exhausted when she got home this morning. So I found myself at the AMC Theatre in North Fort Myers watching Transformers. A very well made movie, but they could have left out all the stuff about the 16 year old lead character lusting after a 15 or 16 year old girl. So the movie wasn’t perfect, but it was good. Who wouldn’t like watching cars turn into robots and fight each other? Other than that this has simply been a nice relaxing day off. I really couldn’t think of anything more perfect on this ‘perfect’ day.
Jeremiah and Ezekiel really have hung me up on my 90 day read through the Bible. I am well past 90 days and am just getting to Daniel.
Essentially what has happened is that I found Jeremiah to be extremely depressing, reading about what happened to Israel because they would not turn back to God. In some ways I think I see so many correlations between modern western society and Israel that I am also saddened by the state of society today. In addition to how difficult Jeremiah was the first 24 chapters of Ezekiel relive these events in Israel’s history once again. God really wants to make it clear that the destruction of Israel and Jerusalem were very intentional. They turned away from Him, so he turned away from them so that they would turn back to Him again. So it has been hard to pick up and keep reading. So hard that it has taken me almost 2 months to get through these two books. Sorry for the excuses, I need to get back on track with the reading plan.
So what have I learned during my time in the book of Ezekiel?
There is an early call to missions found in Ezekiel. The following verse is God explaining to Ezekiel why he has been commissioned to share God’s messages to the people of Israel.
“If righteous people turn away from their righteous behavior and ignore the obstacles I put in their way, they will die. And if you do not warn them, they will die in their sins. None of their righteous acts will be remembered, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. But if you warn righteous people not to sin and they listen to you and do not sin, they will live, and you will have saved yourself, too.” — Ezekiel 3:20-21
It is for this very same reason that I believe God calls modern day ministers and missionaries. If people don’t hear the message they can’t accept it. So we are called to be messengers. And all God asks for is obedience to relaying His message. So it is very cool to see this concept in Ezekiel.
I also noticed that Ezekiel makes it clear that Yahweh (Jehovah) is not only the God of Israel but the God of all nations. Chapters 25-39 are messages to foreign nations. Essentially they are messages calling for other nations to repent and prophecies of a similar fate of Israel’s if they do not. Up til this point in the Old Testament it seemed plausible that you could conclude that Yahweh (Jehovah) was Israel’s God and that other nations had different God’s. But Ezekiel clears this up and it becomes clear that other nations simply have other gods ( notice the little g). Meaning false gods made of wood and stone. Essentially idols. And through Ezekiel God reached out to the gentiles many generations before Paul was ever called to do this.
The biggest lesson is simply. Follow God. If you turn away from Him, He may very well allow you to walk into the hands of your enemies so that in your desperation you just might turn back to Him. So sometimes when we may look at life and say ‘This stinks.’ It could be God calling you back to himself. Maybe you have strayed away from Him and you need to turn around and return to God. Granted it could be a ‘Job‘ situation. So just because things are hard don’t immediately question your relationship with God, but you shouldn’t rule this out either.
So now I continue my journey through the Bible and enter the book of Daniel…
At the age of around 12 I had figured out that God didn’t exist. I was certain of this. Every encounter I had with a “Christian” seemed to reinforce this view. And I was 12, so I knew I was right. I had even read a few pages in a couple of books in the library on the subject. It also helped that my group of friends also looked down on Christians, and by looked down on them, I mean we thought they were fairly stupid people to believe in God. At this point in my life the word Jesus was something I would hear my Dad say when he was angry, and I guess I had heard that Jesus was a cool guy (if he had even existed), other than that I didn’t know much about Jesus. I had gone to a Summer Sunday School Week thing with my neighbor when I was around 8 years old, I just don’t remember anything about Jesus, just snack time and singing silly songs in a big room.
By the age of 14 I was very much against Christianity. I saw Christians as really being the cause for most of the problems in the world. I thought Christians were all about being ‘good people’ and I kept hearing about ministers doing bad things. Hypocrisy = False, so I kept right on thinking Christians were some of the dumbest people on the planet.
At the age of 15 I began to get involved in Wicca. I studied spells and attempted divining spirits. My experience in this made me realize that there was another dimension to existence. A Spirit world. I guess what was attractive about Wicca and Witchcraft at the time was that a few of my other friends were into it, so I wanted to be cool like them. But during this time of my life there was always something in my gut that kept me questioning if this Wicca stuff was worth anything, at times I even thought maybe I was simply crazy.
At the age of 16 I got wheels. I bought an old Toyota Tercel hatchback from a junkyard. During this summer I was driving around with a friend when we saw a gathering of people outside of a house. And we saw a Christian, we knew she was a Christian mainly because we gave her a hard time for being a Christian in High School. Yeah we were jerks. So we had to stop and give her a hard time again, I mean it was summer and we hadn’t been able to make fun of her since school had been out. So we stopped and she came over to the car. She was nice to us and asked us to come stay for a Bible Study her parents had at their house every Monday. We laughed at the idea and left, joking about how stupid that entire conversation had been. But something was really bugging me. “Why was she so nice to us when we were so mean to her?” After I dropped my friend off at his house I drive back down that same street and found that everyone was leaving the house, and she was outside again. I stopped and she came over to the car. I basically asked her “What is wrong with you?” and she talked about Jesus. I thought that was weird but she asked again if I would be willing to come to their Bible Study on Monday evenings. I said no. But the next Monday I ended up going, I wanted to find out why she was so different. The curiosity was too strong to resist. What I encountered was a family that cared deeply for each other and for others. This was kinda new for me. Not to say that my family wasn’t caring, but everything was always surface level with my family. After that night I was at their house almost every day. I had found a family that made me feel good, and loved. I liked that. And over the next few weeks I realized that what was different about them was that they had accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior and that He had changed them. I knew that God was real now, and I knew about his Son, Jesus. And I knew that God wanted to change me. But for a few weeks I fought this idea. It went against everything I had believed. Yet I knew it was true so I did what I knew I needed to do, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was then baptized at a small Baptist Church in Springfield.
After this I tried to live a double life spending time with my new Christian friends and still with my previous friends who were not pro-Christian. This was a hard balancing act and I kept finding that my old friends just were not good for me. I was now a Christian, and my old friends were starting to get into bad stuff. So I began looking for somewhere to go where I could find Christian’s my age. I found that at Chatham Baptist Church. I got involved in their youth group and began spending more time with other Christians. It was there that I learned that most Christians struggle, and as bad as this may seem, this was encouraging to me. I wasn’t the only Christian having problems battling the old self or desires to break Gods will.
When I graduated from High School I attended Lincoln Land Community College where I became a member of Christian Student Fellowship (CSF). It was while I was in CSF that I grew a lot with God. For the past two years of being a Christian I had really not learned much about the Bible, I had made being a Christian mostly a social thing, but CSF changed that. I began digging into the scriptures and by doing this my life changed more and more. I realized that God had shared with us a message that can help transform your life. Now that is cool. I also went on a mission trip to Mexico with CSF and God opened my eyes up to a whole new world. And I knew he wanted me to be doing something more than what I had planned.
God wanted me to do something with ministry. I simply knew this, every part of me told me this. I was scared, not sure what to do. But since I didn’t have any Bible Background I knew I needed to learn the Bible better. So I ended up at Minnesota Bible College (now Crossroads College). Bible College wasn’t what I had expected. I expected to meet Christian’s that were excited about ministry and serving God, and I met a few people like that but overall I found a community of Christians that were simply comfortable where they were and growth in Christ was something more discussed than practiced on a day to day basis. I got more involved in a Missions group on campus where one other student became a great influence in my life. we talked a lot over the course of the next few years. We came up with crazy ideas to fund missions projects, but more importantly we talked about God, and through these conversations I grew in my understanding of God. I know now I was at MBC primarily to meet the people I became friends with, more than to sit in class and listen to professors. After I graduated from MBC I worked a bit in Minnesota but then moved back to my parents house in Illinois. I had a ton of student loan debt and really didn’t know where God wanted me to go, so I worked. The bills all wanted to get paid. Then I met New Mission Systems International at a conference in Witchita Kansas called the National Missionary Convention. They asked me to consider moving down to Fort Myers,FL and work with them while I figured out what God wants me to be doing. A few months later I flew down to Fort Myers, FL to check them out and I loved what I saw. They had a community of believers working alongside one another in preparation to go all over the world. This wasn’t the kind of community I found in college, but a community dedicated to serving and growing. So I made the decision to work with NMSI. I started raising support and then moved down to Fort Myers, FL without even 10% of what I needed pledged. I knew so strongly that God wanted me there and that he would provide. This wasn’t an easy decision but one that really stretched my faith to move over 1,000 miles away and have no idea how the bills would get paid. After a couple months with NMSI I realized that support was not really coming in and I was considering getting a job in the evenings so I could work at NMSI. This is when an opportunity to be involved in Campus Ministry at Florida Gulf Coast University opened up, so I jumped at the opportunity. I served Christian Campus Fellowship as a part-time Campus Minister for two years. This was an amazing blessing. The experience I got from this was abundant, and it allowed me to continue serving with NMSI. God provided, more than just enough money to pay the bills but an amazing experience as well.
At NMSI I met my wife, Jaime as well. So of course I am glad I moved to Florida. Before we got married we began plans to serve in Kenya with NMSI through a program called AfricaHope. Our initial plan was to work in the US for about 5 years to pay off some debts and then move to Kenya. But Jaime was unable to get a Nursing job (even though there was a shortage) so we decided to begin raising support to head to Kenya as soon as possible. We saw her not getting a job as a sign from God to move to Kenya sooner rather than later. After about a year our support raising efforts were not going well. We had been at 40% funded for most of that time, so we were discouraged. At this time Jaime’s oldest brother was diagnosed with cancer for the second time in his life. So we decided to put our Kenya plans on hold to be with him. I got a job with Atos Origin to pay the bills and then we bought a house as an investment so we wouldn’t be paying rent. (hopefully this works out well for us) Just before 2007 Jaime’s oldest brother passed away. Jaime is now working at Healthpark Hospital as an RN, and now we are trying to figure out what God wants us to be doing. It appears that we will be in Cape Coral for at least the next 3-5 years, that is fairly certain, but after that only God knows. But we are excited to be following Him, and know that wherever that may be, He always goes ahead of us. Maybe it will be Kenya or Kentucky, I have no idea. But I want to be open to go wherever He leads.
