testimony

I want you to know me. I don’t want you to know me as a stranger. I’m not alright. This, is my story.
I’ve grown up in a Christian family, that helped make the choice to follow Jesus a familiar one. By time I accepted him, I knew Him, He wasn’t a stranger. I accepted my King when I was about six or maybe five. Young, younger than you guys are now. But that doesn’t mean I was perfect. I still preferred to sleep in church than listen to a man preach for an hour or so. I liked sleep.
It wasn’t until we moved to Red Deer, that God started to develop in me and I saw places to run to learn more about Him. I went to Bethany Baptist Youth for a long time, and there, God changed. I saw an active Creator. I journeyed to a youth event called EQUIP. There I learned more about my youth pastors, worship, and a Jesus I had never knew. I saw youth filled with the Creator, dying to reach out to the world. I went there a second year after. But before the second, I went to Seattle.
I went to Seattle on a mission trip with Bethany and Crossroads. I opened my eyes to a world I never knew. I saw the homeless, in need for a Shelter. I saw the lost, in need of a Rescuer. I saw walks of life, in need for a Path. This world was bigger and in more need than I realized. But still, that wasn’t where God would send me. He would send me closer to home. My school.
God used the Holy Spirit, and guided me to my school. In December of 2006 I let it out. I started something that would last months to come. Project Re:Introduction, is a God-inspired series of sermons. I really felt during those moments, that God was there. That the Holy Spirit had led me to that very time. It all seemed right. But there was still what was happening under the skin of me. My own struggle with sin.
Over the years, I formed my skin to show a good, strong Christian. I showed everyone what I wanted them to see. Nothing more, I didn’t show them my ugliness. My disgust, my revolting sinful underbelly. I describe it like this cause this is how sin is. And this is how I see it.
My struggle started about 3-4 years back. My whole view of faith, sin and the skin of a Christian were destroyed. I started to die, slowing, due to a struggle with gay pornography. It consumed me, shook my faith, everything. To this day I struggle. This is what lies below my skin. This sin has caused me to fear discovery. Discovery of my sin to a judging world, a judging family, hating friends. It made me worry to the point of isolation sometimes, I didn’t want people to know the true me.
This is how I can stand and say, that the Lord is good. Cause, even when I sin, He loves me deeply. He loves me beautifully. And this is true of all the sin. All that fall short of the glory of God. So I can stand, and saw that everything is beautiful, even when I sin, I know my God loves me.

waking up

Too many years past, the alarm clock rang, for all to believe, to come to One, come to One and give up their sins. Then the unthinkable happened.
We fell asleep.
We have hit the snooze button on our faith. We decided that, "Aww, maybe next week, maybe next Sunday", maybe's. The start of compromised. The start of destruction.
As soon as we stop living an absolute faith, we let Satan attack us. We have to stand, wide awake, and believe firmly. Believe with unwavering, unrelenting passion to see a world on fire. We must say, "My future is decided, I'll live for Him!"
Satan can't stop, when we believe, he is weak. When we worship with our hearts, not just our mouths, Satan falls to his knees. When we wake from our slumber, and believe, Satan WILL run.
God is calling out, in prayer, in the bible, in chruch, at your youth group, everywhere. He is ready, ready to move us, to use us in unbelievable ways. If, if we would just awake up.

bring the pain

Christians now, tend to be a little less than the Davids, Pauls, and Johns of days past. We shy away from any part of standing out that may lead to humiliation, embarrassment, or dare I say it, pride in our faith. Who ever imagined Christians wanting to live a life, fearless, for Christ. That's just crazy.
Everyday, in every possible way, Christians seek to shine His light in foreign countries everywhere. They sit in prison cells, telling their inmates about Christ and His death on the cross. And they, the ones who accept the pain of belief, are the ones who see the Spirit move. We must stand and shout! "Satan, I will stand for God forever and ever, so bring the pain!"
We must bring the fight. We must stand and say we believe! If it's true and we know, then we should stand unashamed of our God. Christians have someone worth dying for, a message worth the cost of death, and we need to share it. We need to tell the world, no matter who cares or what they think. All we should focus on should be the uncompromised love of Christ on the cross. We should be willing to bear the pain of belief, if He was willing to bear the pain of sin.

searching for a saviour

The world is hungry for rescue. Whether it be a kitten in a tree to a person suffering from a heart attack, it wants to be saved. It makes movies about the Christ, and off-shots of the story, i.e. the Matrix trilogy. It all fits. The world is searching for a saviour. We are meant to introduce them to that saviour.
We have a saviour, our Christ, who died for all our sins and the world's, a big price. We are meant to show ALL to Him. Even thoses we can't stand, who bugs us to our last nerve, they all need to her the message from the King. He already paid the price of treason.
Why do we hold back then? We hold it all in, shelter it in our chruches, our little circles of friends, our schools, why hide it?! No excuse can make up for the billions walking in darkness all around us. We are playing a big game of hide and seek with this world and their souls. But how will they know where to look if no one tells them?

living in smallville

The popular show, Smallville, about the young Clark Kent is filled to the brim with the bizarre and supernatural. Weekly, strange, sometimes miraculous things happen. Well, did you know you can live there?
The Holy Spirit acts, sometimes in bizarre ways, performing miracles and accomplishing the supernatural. But unlike the might Clark Kent, it has no weakness. No green meteor rock will stop the Holy Spirit, it always moves. Daily, always.
But we have a weakness. And that weakness is what can destroy our chance of seeing the Holy Spirit do amazing things. Our weakness: SIN. We sin, we cheat, we lie, we downright suck sometimes. But Christ, on the cross, died for OUR sins, and gave us the chance to live. Christ become our personal Superman and took our kryptonite covered lives as it were, and died to cleanse us. How awesome is that!
And now, with a saved life, and taking a walk in the light, we can see the Spirit move in supernatural ways. We can live in Smallville.

standing up

Where did all the excitement go? All the "amens", the "hallujehs!". Jesus was, is and is to come, the everlasting joy. I guess that doesn't apply to us, Christians today? I taught a sunday school lesson to a younger class, and my eyes where opened. Our generation, has decided to sit down.
To sit down, and become unexcited about Christ. We chose to sit down, shut up, and only speak when spoken to. That sucks if you're part of the lost. If all our generation stops being excited, thrilled, overjoyed for Christ, what's the difference between us and them? None.
We have to rise up! We have to take a stand! It's time to get off our self-pitying, self-righteous butts and tell the world. Tell the world that we know someone, someone who is dead and is alive. Someone who died for OUR sins. There's joy in knowing you are forgiven and aren't gonna burn eternally in hell. But we can rejoice all day knowing that we are on the narrow path. Stand up, open your mouth and tell the world that Jesus lives again!

when did the bible close?

When did the bible close? When did Christiany die? When did will be it be revived?
I wonder, how much dust is growing on that old bible? Youth today, so consumed with
YouTube, MySpace and iPods, are forgot the reason for their existence, their salvation.
I've worked the halls of my school, a Christian school, and it seems that the God and faith that the school was built on is gone, washed away. Some students forget their bibles!?! What's wrong with this picture? Where's the joy within? Where's the talk of Jesus or the acts of the Spirit in the hallways? It left as soon as we decided to close the bible. And just that, we grew apathetic to every attempt to be set afire again for Christ. We decided that a life of 'happiness', was better than a life of absolute joy in Jesus, Our Beautiful Saviour. It makes me worried as we are the next era, generation of Christians. What kind of generation will that be? Are we gonna be the generation that forgets John 3:16?