I finally picked my candidate.

The primary race that we have watched unfold in front of us this year has been unbelievable! I am very pleased to have been able to see such a tight and hard fought battle. Democrats have been beating on each other in a way that reminds me of how Rocky used to punch meat in the factory freezer. I have seen enough now to know which way I will go.

You see, I like the fact that our economy seems to due better under the Democrat party. I am not a big fan of their standards on abortion and being so easy on drug dealers but I am in favor of the economy growing. This race has been tight. I tried not to pick a candidate in an ignorant manner and I believe that I have done a pretty good job of researching and looking past the media. The media is favoring Obama and I mean big time. I believe that they should remain neutral but that just won't happen. So I have looked past them as much as possible.

With the smoke that the Democrat race has supplied it was not easy to look for the proper candidate. After reading statement after statement, watching video after video, and reviewing voting records throughly I have come to the conclusion that I must switch my political view, at least for this race, and endorse McCain.

I feel that McCain is not the best man for the job but that he is the best candidate running in this election. The choices are not to great. I waited as long as I could hoping that one of the Democrats would pull me in their direction but that never happened. This one came down to morals and beliefs. While I feel that our economy would be better off with a Democrat I cannot endorse Hillary or Obama with any confidence that they are going to lead us in the right direction.

Blessed!

My plans were to post on Friday. I have given up on blogging everyday for now and am content with blogging a couple of times a week. I was planning to post on Friday but due to the fact that I am now a Dad that is least of priorities. I am going tp e taking a short(2 days to 2 weeks) break on post. This is due to a need to of being a new dad.My daughter was born on Feb. 14, 08 at 8:51 pm . Get this. She weighted 10lbs 12 oz and was 20 inches long! One big baby! So don't think that I have gone awol. Just taking a few days off to realize my blessing@

I am ANGRY!!!!!

I was going around from blog to blog, reading some good post and just have some much fun that I felt like my house should be home to the GOP(Grand Old Party). Then all of a sudden I was angered. Beyond belief. I have never been this disappointed at any web site in my life. This is the website of a church! A church! This came from people who claim to love God. A bunch of scripture quoting un-compassionate thugs. Yeah, I am writing angry.

I have never said this about any person or Church before that claimed to be Christian, but there is a first time for everything, They are not Christians! You will know them by their Fruit! That fruit is Peace, Hope, Understanding, Acceptance, Help, and Love! Not hate! My God is not a God of hate! He does not hate you! He does not hate gays! He does not hate killers, nor liars, nor any sinner under the sun! He hates SIN! SIN not the PERSON!

This my friends is the reason why so many people say that God is dead! They say that He doesn't care! They call us bigots, hypocrites, lairs, fake , and all that other fun stuff you have heard your entire life. There is a reason for this!

Westboro Baptist Church this is looking at you! Put yourself under the microscope and see what you are! I am hurt, I am stunned, I am betrayed, I am more upset than I have ever been!

People who don't know God please do not think that this is what we are all about! We want to be your brothers and sisters. If you have been hurt by a church like this one then please forgive us. We should have watched better and gave fair warning! Not all people who say they are Christians really are.

Is it wrong to rip CDs or download the wrong way from Lime Wire?

I have a buddy who is in the music industry. He is a Christian. He does not pay for music he uses. Never has. He borrows cds from friends and then rips to his collection or he uses Lime Wire and downloads his music for free then goes through all the copying, burning and sharing. I have never done this through Lime Wire or any other place. I don't honestly know what the difference is between downloading them illegally or the legit way. I just pay for my music then listen to it(usually through iTunes). He has stated that he knows it is illegal. He actually told me how he has always done it and got by with it.
My question is how is this seen in the eyes of God?! It seems that we download or get free music without paying the artist and think it is okay. Would you go into walmart, grab a cd, then walk out with it? I hope not! Stealing is stealing in my eyes. The "everyone does it defense" does not hold up in the court of law nor does it before the throne. Go buy your music. Look at it has another way to separate yourself from the world.

Hillary vs Obama with a Hint of Rudy!

This just made me laugh...

Should Christian Couples Have Children?Swap Blog

When I was writing the last post it reminded me of a post I read at a better blog. Yes, yes Swap Blog. 99.9% of the blogs out there are composed of better writers, thinkers, and story tellers than I could be. Anyway here is a segment of the post they posted awhile back. I suggest you finish reading this one....

Marriage and kids

Are Christian couples compelled by God to have children? That question seems to arise a lot in today’s world, so what are the feelings of the Christian blogosphere on this?

God ordained marriage to be between a man and a woman, honesty hurts sometimes people. He also ordained marriage to be a means of procreation........(more)

Soon to be.

In a short amount of time my life will change. The first major change in a man's life come with the unity of marriage. The males world goes upside down and inside out. All of our priorities change. We go from watching Sports Center to listening to Rachael Ray cook eggs benedict 24 different ways. We go from being able to stay u all night playing xbox to staying up and watching lifetime.
More importantly we go to not caring so much about the xbox or Sports Center. We start to care about different aspects of our life. We want to get our lives in order. We cannot do that if we are up all night dominating Madden. It just can't coexsist. We have new proritys. Then once we feel like we are begining to take control of the new phase of life....We have kids!
When I think about kids I think about panic, money, schools, do I have enough space, can they come out potty trained, how did this happen, what am I going to do!?!?! It can be frustrating. These are what I thought when I found out I was to be a dad. Now it is getting closer and I cannot help but to wonder. Why worry? This is going to happen. How much distrust in God do I show by not displaying my faith in Him to provide. Yeah me and my wife are young. Yeah we had a five year plan for children. Yeah it wasn't meant to go down like this. Well it is though. No more five year plan. No extended time to prepare for all this finacally. No way out. Stiaght forward and faith we must approach this. God is in complete control. I know this. Now I must show this.
We look for foward to the birth of Annalise Elizabeth! We know that God made big plans for all of us. No matter what our size or age, have a part in God's everlasting plan. The works of God extend beyond the molten rock, the trees, the sky, and the stars. They extend to all of us. We are the works of God! His most treasured works! So a child birth should never bring concern. It should always be a great thing. When a child is born every dad is proud of what they "made"! Do you think that God is any different! Our loving heavenly Father rejoices in child birth! No you won't find that in those words in scripture. Maybe it is some more of my bad theology. I don't think so.
Soon to be. A work of God is about to be revealed in my life. I get to watch this work come into the world. I am excited and blessed for the opportunity that God has given me.

The Golden Compass...

Phillip Pullman hates the work of C.S. Lewis. He is an atheist. He has made a movie that is the exact opposite of the Chronicles of Narnia.
Nichole Kidman has the starring role. This movie slickly dumbs down your kids into getting them to watch what the atheists believe to be truth.
The Golden Compass is set to release in theaters on December 7, 2007.
For the full story click here...

Ten Cannots

Found this post over at Swap Blog thought it would be good to share with you all today.
Ten Cannots


This came over the email transome and I KNOW it is worth sharing and applying to our lives (personally, professionally, etc.)

“The Ten Cannots,” authored in 1916 by German emigre William J.H. Boetcker, a Presbyterian minister who died in 1962.

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift

• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong

• You cannot help little men by tearing down big men
• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer

• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich

• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money

• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred

• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more money than you earn

• You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence

• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Mother Teresa is Disrespected

After 66 years of hardcore, dedicated service to the cause of Christ Mother Teresa died(ten years ago). This was a woman who didn't have alot in life because she had sacrificed it all to God. The only thing she asked when she was dying was that her letters she had written over the period of her 66 year long servitude be destroyed. Did she get it...No!
What she got was that the church held onto her letters and made a book out of them. They say that it will help people to better understand her and her work.
Some letter are letters that she has written where she questions here faith. Atheist are having a field day with that. He is some news to you. Every one questions their faith. Everybody will come to points in their lives where they will say they have doubts. They would be lying to sya they don't. We still have to seek answers. We need to be reassured. He would be nice if we didn't but we do. We have to study the Bible so we can see how God works and learn to look for Him in nature, objects, people, places, in everything we can find Him.
So what if she questioned her own faith from time to time. She still stayed true and continued to work for God, speak of God, show His love, and all that other jazz that most of who call our lives Christian lives never learn to do. Questioning our faith can actually do us good. We can sometimes learn how small we really are, how little we understand, to dig deeper for the answers, lead to more prayer which is always a great things, lead to more reading of our Bible, and a revival of our faith.
Just because she was considered a "Super-Christian" by many changes nothing. She was still human and still dealt with alot of the same doubts that we do. She just learned to over come them. It is wrong for us not honor her wishes and destroy the letters. Wrong in all ways. Shame on us.

Fight Fair-(from premarial counseling)

Okay so last night was the last session of counseling for me and my soon to be wife. We covered three subjects and instead of putting both into one post why not spread it out. The topics that were presented to us were fighting, right thinking, and sex. Well you can look at the topics and see why they would each need to be discussed. So for now we are going to do fair fighting.
What does it mean to fight fair? You hear this boxing and growing up may have heard it a little in school. So what does it mean to fight fair with your wife/husband? I means to fight for today. A fair fight is not a fight with things that happened yesterday, last week, last year, or anytime besides today. Alot of people have a mental set post-its and when ever something is said or done they will mark it down ad store it for later. We fill up the gun with has many bullets we can fit into it before the big fight. Why? We are asking for a big big fight.
When you husband or wife does something that is not all that likable to you(and they will) you have to address it that day or let it go. Now that doesn't mean that you have to fight in the middle of a restaurant. That means you should look them and say,"I know you love me but what you just said really hurt my feelings. When we go home we should talk about this."
It is not that hard to do. Most of the time it is habit to hold in our thoughts of how we feel. For us guys it is even tougher. We are suppose to be macho men! We have to realize that our women see us as their big softies. We should feel up that roll. Now don't worry guys they also see us as their rocks, protectors, and all that other strong guy stuff. They want you to be able to tell them what is bothering you and not do it in three weeks over her not filling up the gas tank. Women the huffing and puffing for two days doesn't help. We need to know what is going on with you. You have to let us when we hurt you. Don't get in front of us during Saturday's game and remind us of all our failed attempts to start home projects and then our personal faults.
Fighting should be fair and that means for us to fight about an event that happened today and not any other day. Let the bullets go. Your fights will be over a lot faster. There are tons of books on healthy fights. Go and read one some time. It will really help your marriage.

Why I Believe.

I believe because a life with out God is a waste of a life. If life is all there is then that opens the door as to why we are here. I don’t believe that we are here to be a happy person for only a short time and then die. I can’t begin to tell you the sorrow that comes from just thinking this is it.
I believe because I see God. I read his word and know that what He said has been true in everything I have ever done. He wrote about my life and yours before we were ever born. Thousands of years ago the Bible was given to us and yet to this very day it remains true and not outdated. Yes the surroundings have changed but the truth and the principles are still true every bit today has they were then.
I believe because nothing else has put in my place like God has. He doesn’t play games. It is serious. Heaven or hell. Life or death. Good or evil. We have a choice to make and it is the biggest choice that we could ever imaging. God doesn’t play.
I believe because love is present. We don’t see it all the time but even in the darkest hours that we face. Even when people are killing each other because they can. If we look close enough we will see the love that God sends to us in every form. We are not capable of that, only God is.
To believe is to have faith that we are not just an big chain reaction that is the result of billions of years of evolution from creatures that are still present today(doesn’t make sense to me at least). Life is bad. People are cruel. To think that this is the only good that I will ever see is grounds for insanity. No I will believe. There is more. There is God.

Hurting for a Prayer

So I was thinking about prayer and how at times it seems stronger than others. So I had to sit down and think…”What is it that as separated my prayers in the past from the prayers I now pray?”
Answers began to pour into my small mind. I remember a time when sin was a big part of my life and I lived in it knowingly and did nothing to change it. Night after night I would I would prayer for to be forgiven for the same sins because I committed them over and over and over again. I felt so unworthy to pray. So after a while my prayer life was a crash scene of confusion. “I don’t know what to do..” I would pray. But I always knew then that my answer was to simply stop doing the sins that were making me feel like God hated to hear me coming. It was that simple. Yes I on occasion sin those same sins. The difference is that I do not do them and then say “Oh well I can pray for them tonight and they will be fine.” God hates sin. It separates us from God. God hears the prayers of the holy and to be in sin and not try to stop is going to take the power of our prayers down to little or nothing.
The next problem I thought of was when I started to pray I would not feel like God was really listening because I didn’t know how to pray right.
I prayed anyway. I forced myself at times to go before God and give plea my needs and those of others out to Him. After a while I was asked to lead prayer in the middle of the pod. It wasn’t long before big words were getting used in my prayer and others were praying aloud in agreement with me. I went to bed one night and before I went to sleep I had a friend tell me that I needed to be careful not take glory from my prayers. Others were counting on me to pray for and with them. I thought about what he had said and that night I tossed and turned. I saw myself in my mind standing before the pod and and praying loudly and using five dollar words.Then it hit me! God doesn’t care about those things. I did! I had to ask the leaders of the church to find some one else to pray before the people. My prayers were not to God but to praise myself. To this day hold back what I say when I pray aloud and that keeps me from getting caught up in pride. I love the spotlight. I have to work to put God first if I want to be able to pray with power. I am not able at this time to pray aloud like the Spirit tells me I can because I am vain. Limit your exposure and give it to God for prayers that move mountains.
The last thing I thought of was alot like the second problem. I just didn’t pray. I would be asked to pray for some and agree. I always intended to pray for them but never seemed to remember when I was on my face. Pray for them ,pray with them. Pray at all times of the day. you don’t have to let others see it you don’t have to disappear. Pray as you walk. Pray as you sit. Pray as you drive. Pray whenever you can. Watch you prayer life grow.
Prayer is like working out in the gym. You will start out small but with alot of reps you will soon get strong in what to pray for. You will be able to pray long and with more passion towards God then you ever knew you was capable of. Praying is talking to God. So sometimes after or before you pray get in word. Or just be still and don’t talk and focus on God. Listen for His voice. Prayer is only hurt when we fall short.

DON'T BE THE LAST STANDING.

This was sent to me in an email and is the coolest on I have gotten in a while. Enjoy it and don't be the last standing.

Age of the Earth

Fulfillment- (Premarital Counseling)

Don't you love that your wife or husband is the part that completes you. She or he makes you feel fulfilled. Right? Wrong my friend! You spouse cannot fulfill no more than you can fulfill yourself. Like when you go out and by stuff but you still need more stuff so you keep on buying and buying. It will never end. You cannot be satisfied. You will always want more than yo have. It is the same way with you wife our husband.
Lets break it down. Men your wife is going to fail you. She is going to disappoint you. Dinner may be bad one night, the house a wreck, the clothes not folded, or she may actually lie to you. Ladies your husband is going to want to watch the game while you are cleaning, he will fall asleep on you new couch with in a week, his socks will not be turned right side out when you go to wash them, and you know what...? We will forget on of those holiday's that you think we should be able to recite in our sleep(friendly joke, we should know those dates).
Here is my point. you are going to let each other down alot. If it is fulfillment you are looking for you should not hold you breath. Fir you will turn blue and pass out. Fulfillment is not deserved. We are deserving of hell because of our sins. God never sad that we should live a life of complete enjoyment.We are told of hardship and trials. If you want fulfillment you better find Jesus. Because no person, place,or thing will give it to you ever. People are not fulfilling.Only Jesus is.

Discovery Gives More Credibility/Validity to Christian Scriptures

Discovery Gives More Credibility/Validity to Christian Scriptures

Complete Post from Splinters of Silver
Discovery Channel: Ancient Tablet Vouches for Biblical King

“Non-biblical evidence for individuals named in the Bible is rare, particularly for people who were not royals. But an ancient Babylonian tablet provides further proof that a king and his servant — both named in the Book of Jeremiah — existed in the 6th century B.C.

According to an announcement by Assyriologist Michael Jursa and the British Museum, the small clay tablet from the museum's collections bears the name of Babylonian officer Nebo-Sarsekim. In chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, this individual is described as being with King Nebuchadnezzar II at the siege of Jerusalem in the year 587 B.C.”

“Brody thinks the tablet represents "further verification that certain historical elements within the Book of Jeremiah are valid."”

Alibi Network

“If you go stray, why not get away with it?…. Your partner will be spared hurt…..Keeping your affair discreet,keeping your marriage alive.”
It is a cover up for those who wish to cheat. This company,The Alibi Network in Illinois,really helps people cheat. It starts at $75.00 for a temporary untraceable number to a “full-cover alibi.”
They provide people with a fake hotel reservation, fake airplane itinerary,fake hotel answering service,fake work seminars,fake seminar schedules,fake seminar registrations and optional fake certificates of seminar completion.
Company executives say this…”It is a healthy deception-if you care enough to craft an expensive alibi,the logic goes, you must have some tender feeling for the deceived.If there was no demand we would have no company.We didn’t invent lying.We didn’t invent infidelity.We just found a niche in the existing market.”
Well first off it is not a market. It is cheating and it is not right at any time for any reason.Cashing in on peoples infidelity makes you have the sin on your hands. You are lying to people and destroying lives.You have made it more acceptable now than ever. This is what we have come to. We now have a company that helps people lie and get away with cheating.This is completely unacceptable to me and I know that my Bible says that it is unacceptable.
Hotel-$55 a night
Alibi-$75
Infidelity-Unacceptable