From the Real to the Fake

This is a song I just wrote, please give me some honest input!

[V1]

How can something that felt so real

Turn out to be something so fake

We exchanged our goodbyes

And while I thought I was being cute

All I was was annoying

You say you need more time with God

I say “That’s cool, but what about us?”

I’m a little confused to this reasoning

The reasons for you letting me go

[Chorus]

You left being so pretty

You came back looking the same

But the outsides prettier than the in

I can’t help but compare the then to the now

Maybe I’m being a little pessimistic

But my glass isn’t half-empty, its bone dry

[V2]

Life is way to short to fuss over the niceties

So why did you lie all that time

We’ve exchanged our goodbyes

And while you thought you could fix this

All you’ve done is widen the wound

You said you need more time with God

I say “That’s cool, but what about us?”

I’m a little confused to this reasoning

The reasons for you letting me go

[Chorus]

[Bridge]

You said time heals all wounds

But these wounds are just too deep

The river might be too big

For me to build a bridge to get over it

[Chorus]

You said you need more time with God

I say “That’s cool, but what about us?”

I’m a little confused to this reasoning

The reasons for you letting me go

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Now playing: Mayday Parade - I'd Hate To Be You When People Find Out What This Song Is About
via FoxyTunes

A Venting

I'm simply sitting. Just sitting and licking envelopes for a letter to go out.

Then, the text came. It was a text I thought I had waited so long for, but turned out to be one that I would always remember as a moment of sheer depression and sadness.

"I don't want to talk to you."

The words of Donkey from the movie Shrek come to mind: "You cut me deep Shrek, you cut me real deep just now." Except this wasn't a lovable, big green ogre. It was from someone I thought was a best friend, one I could turn to when I needed her. I guess the feeling wasn't as mutual as I had hoped.

What do you do in a situation like this? I responded "OK then", threw my phone against the wall and hoped I wouldn't hear the sound of my phone getting another text. My luck ran out today. I got another one, explaining why. Lets just say it didn't exactly meet my expectations of a explanation.

*ding* Just got another text. Pulled out the "I'm trying to do God's Will, so I'm not talking to you. What a self-confidence boost, God is telling people to stop talking to me (my sincere apologies to anyone who had to suffer through that). If you're ever tempted to do this, let me tell you the mature thing to do: tell the person that you're not talking to them BEFORE you start not talking to them. And try to explain it more than "You just wouldn't understand", cause you're right I don't understand. Throw me a bone here.

I guess this post is just me venting at the world. And girls, no offense I think.

I'm now going to finish my letters and go home and listen to some loud music and attempt to drown out the world.

Peace: Wanted, but never gained

Peace: how we strive for it.

I saw a friend's picture of a peace symbol spray painted on a roadblock. Her subtitle for it was "if only it were that simple" or something to that effect. That got me thinking, and we all know how dangerous that can be.

I love peace. I think God wants us to love peace. This is evident when He tells us "Blessed are the peacemakers" in Matthew 5. But will we ever gain peace?

Jesus tells us that evidence of the Second Coming of Christ is "wars and rumors of war". He tells us that he did not come to bring peace to the world "but to bring a sword". In the latter reference I don't think He meant a literal sword, but that by the simply fact of believing in Him there will be conflict between us and the world. And there should be conflict. But I'm getting off track here.

My point is this: Until Jesus returns and takes away His Church (not a literal building, but Christians, whom He calls the Church) there will be violence. How I wish it weren't so, but thats the truth.

I'm not saying we don't need to strive for peace. Like I said earlier, God wants us to be peaceful with our neighbor. But not everyone believes in Him. Heck, even after Jesus reigns over earth for 1000 years there will still be people who won't believe He is the Savior of the world.

I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say here to be honest. I guess I'm saying to not be surprised when world peace is never achieved. But I can tell you this with absolute certainty: the turmoil inside your own life, God can give you peace.

That is all.

Entry from a Journal of a Semi-Stressed Christian Teen

The title is basically the intro to this post...basically.

So I was thinking today how hard it is to be a teenager and to still be "on fire" for the Lord. The answer I came up with is "it's really tough". I mean think of all the stuff we have to put up with. All the "popular" kids going out and drinking, getting high, and lounging around smoking cigars; parents trying to steer your life where they want it to go, without really asking prior approval; pressure from church to "do what's right"; if you'll be old enough, who to vote for come November. Craziness out the wazoo (yeah, it's a real word. Google it.) It being summer makes it a lot harder. Now you have 8 more hours to do stuff rather than be in school. You could get a job (as if life isn't stressful enough), you can chill out at home (Xbox and Facebook...can life get better?), you chill with friends (especially if it's Wacky Wednesday and Hungry Howies). Craziness out the wazoo (again). So whats a Christian brother supposed to do?

I've found that because it's summer, I have much more time to do stuff I know I shouldn't do. But I also found that I now have no excuse to not be doing stuff I should do.

God has called all of us to try to live the life He displayed for us in the 30 odd years He was on this earth. He called us to "be Holy, as I am Holy". That's a really tough goal. How do you do it? In Matthew 4, you see Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan. Satan tempts Jesus with even ruling the world, and Jesus said no. How was He able to do that? If you look in the passage, Jesus always quotes Scripture! "For it is written..." WOOBAM!!! Mental note to self: "Know the Word and what it says about stuff I deal with." Now that I don't have to be waking up at 6 in the morning to go to school, I can spend a whole lot more time in the Word! If you look through out the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Jesus does a lot of going off by Himself and praying. Sure, we can pray wheneve, wherever, however, but there's something about being by yourself and pouring out your worries to God, thanking Him for what He's done in your life. It's awesome.

So...thats the end of this first little entry. I don't even know if anyone's gonna be reading this, but hopefully someone will get something out of it. Hahaha. God bless, peace out.

Love vs. Compromise: Letters from Revelation 2

So while I was on vacation this past week I was reading a really good book called "Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys that Should Be)" by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. I'm not trying to promote the book (even though it's really good) and we can save the emergent discussion for another day (if you're REALLY interested in knowing you can message me on Facebook or email me); I'm just setting the backdrop here. In the very last chapter of the book, Kevin talks about two of the letters written to churches in Revelation (For those of you who didn't know, Revelation isn't all prophesy and all that jazz. The first 3 chapters are letters to seven churches; commending some and scolding others.).

In Rev. 2 there are to churches I'd like to talk about, The Loveless Church (this is what my version of the Bible calls it, it might be different in yours) and The Compromising Church (their real names are Ephesus and Pergamos respectively).

I think the youth of today's generation have a stereotypical viewing of the church as it is in today's America: stifling, dogmatic, anti-fun, and judgemental. These are the things the church in Ephesus (the loveless church) was being condemned for. While they were teaching the correct doctrine, they weren't being loving to their fellow brother or sister in Christ or to the sinners in their area.

Timeout: there was a group of people in the area of Ephesus called the Nicolaitans, who can basically be described as "do-as-you-please" people. They had no moral law or conscience it seemed. Okay...Time-in.

John (the author of Revelation) thanks the Ephesians for not following the ways of the Nicolaitans, which he "also hates" (v. 6 NKJV). But he tells them that they have forgotten their "first love". At first glance this might not strike a chord because it doesn't say out right what their "first love" was. I believe this refers to love in general. In Ephesians 1 (a previous letter written to the church in Ephesus by the Apostle Paul) Paul thanks the church of Ephesus for being loving. But it seems in the years between the letters of Ephesians and John's letter in Revelation that the people have become cold hearted and apathetic to the feelings of others.

I think this is how the youth of my generation sees the church: the doctrine itself is fine, but the way it's delivered is the problem. That it's not a loving message of repentence, but one of judgment and fire and brimstone. I'm not going to say that there isn't a church like that, but I am going to tell you that there are churches that are not like that. The church I attend, Mt Vernon Church, does a good job overall of being loving towards others.

But there is a flipside. When do we become so loving, that we compromise our own beliefs to keep from offending anyone? This is the problem the church in Pergamos.

John's letter tells us that he commends the Pergamos church for being faithful through times of trial (one of their own was martyred, a man by the name of Antipas), but he's got a beef with them also. He says that they have people in their "congregation" who believed in the doctrine of Balaam (in the Old Testament is the story of Balaam and his talking donkey. However if you look more in the OT, you will find Balaam is one of the advisors to the Pharaoh of Egypt and he suggested that the Pharaoh enslave the Jewish people, God's People. A no-no.). Again the Nicolaitans come into play in this letter; this time John is saying that they have followed the way of the Nicolaitans and they need to repent.

Clearly the church at Pergamos took the "love" too far and compromised what they already had been taught by God and His followers.

I hope you got through all this and got something out of it, haha. But if you get one thing out of this post get this: Don't compromise what the Bible tells you to do in order to not offend someone. God would rather them be offended than you disobey Him. God bless you guys, until next time.