All throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John we hear a lot of the same stories, just worded differently, or from a different point of view. To me, I dig it because I usually have a rough time comprehending what I read. So after reading it a few times, I’ve got it down, ish. Reading it, just as always, I learned from it.

Jesus’ first miracle was changing water in to wine in Cana in Galilee at a wedding. I learned about that in John 2:1-11. That’d be rad. Not Gonna lie.

Just like in the earlier books, In John we get to hear about Jesus feeding the 5 thousand and walking on water again. Everytime both stories intrigue me. When Oak Leal Church has our big Redemption offering, I pray that God will do with the money we give just what He did with the bread, turn a little in to a lot. I also wish I could walk on water, that’d be tight as mess.

Jesus performed so many miracles back in the day. Isn’t it incredible that He still does today?

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Love.

John 16:33 is off the chain. Anytime the world gets you down for whatever reason, read it: “… In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Ever been fishin’? It’s fly that in chapeter 21, Jesus tells some of his disciples, who are havin’ worse luck than me when fishing, to drop their nets on the right side of the boat instead of the left. They catch 153 fish by doing so! Gnarly.

After Jesus had been raised and was spending his last lil bit of time on the earth, I learned that He performed many miracles and “things”. “… If everyone of them wre written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John chapter 21:25). That blows my mind, seriously?! The whole world?! I can’t hlep but wonder what all He did. I can’t even fathom!

I can’t wait for Heaven!

2. I can’t wait for the new blink 182 album.

3. I wanna go to Mexico with Oak Leaf.

4. I’m finished reading John, woot!

5. Singles Awareness day is tomorrow. Singles unite!

So God is really really doing some work in my life, and I’m all for it! As a matter of fact, I’m lovin it! I’ve grown so much this past year, honestly I’ve grown so much these past couple of weeks. We’re here to serve. Let’s do work son!! 

I’ve got some stuff on the ole mind, and I’m going to TRY and put them in to words so bear with me, we’ll see how it comes out.

First off, in the last 20 or so years of my life I have hardly picked up my Bible, much less, actually read it, but thats changing, on the real. This year I’ve been trying to read it everyday and record what I’ve learned in my journal. Let me tell you, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I learn something new every time I dive in to the Word. It’s leading me so much closer to God. My heart has grown, Im worried its going to pop out of my chest sometimes, God is filling it with love, with His love! It’s incredibly gnarly! Of course I still fall short, Im still a sinner just like you, but this is what I’ve come to realize. Jesus lifts me up every single time. HE NEVER FAILS! Is that not the best feeling in the world?!?! It’s in these times, when life is pouring down on me that I have a chance to really grow, because it’s in these times that God raps me up and holds me so tight. In these times He whispers in my ear to reassure me how much he loves me, that he’s always with me, that he is bigger than the world, that He is in control. It’s truly amazing. I wanna throw out a challenge to anyone and everyone who reads this: pick up your Bible, pick up a journal, and just read. I swear to you, you will learn. You WILL grow closer to God. I promise friends, I promise. Don’t procrastinate any longer.

Bob Marley said it greatly “Don’t worry about a thing, every little thing is gunna be alright.” He’s right. Jesus said himself in John 16:33 “… In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” He’s saying we don’t have to worry! If God takes care of the birds and other wild animals, then surely He will look after us, He told us that in his word. After all, we were created in His won image. God is here and He’s bigger than we can imagine. In the world, we’ll be disappointed, In God, we can never be disappointed. 

Love. One of my favorite quotes ever is “God is love, and love is real.” I just love it! It’s so true. There needs to be more love in this world. Straight up. Jesus said in John 13:34 “A new command I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” I don’t know about yall, but this moves me. It’s the most simple concept. Let’s show the world God’s love. Let’s love one another. Whatch say? Good idea?

Selfishness and what not: This is a biggy and keeps gettin worse. In the world today have you noticed that everyone is concerned with their own personal “status”? I know I’m guilty. This is something that we all get caught up in. The world tells us that we have to do this to be cool, that we have to act like this, talk like this, wear this… etc. I wrote about this in my last blog a bit, but it’s still on my mind. A lot of peeps now a day want to “fit in” and wanna be “cool” or this or that, so that they can hang with a certain crowd. Heck I do. This is popular among christians too, sometimes we act like we love Jesus, but when peeps aren’t around… ha! we sure don’t show it. Guilty. I think we get stuck asking ourselves “Who am I?” and we think of someone we may “want” to be. Some peeps try forever to be that someone. Wouldn’t be rad if we put Jesus Christ as our role model, Jesus Christ as who we’re trying to be? After all, He was here so that we may follow Him. If we christians could live our lives trying to be as truly Christ-like as possible, the world would be a much greater place. Forget trying to be cool, because guess what, IT DOESN”T MATTER WHAT PEEPS THINK! it matter’s what God thinks. We aren’t going to be on earth for long, why try and make it our home? We can stand up and help each-other reach this goal. Yes, some of us will have to change our lives forever to get there, but that’s ok. Need an accountability partner? I’m right here, and so are many others. 

Latly, let the past go. For a long time, I was stuck living in the past, recently too. Depressing, thinking of past failures and all. Psh! The past is the past. It’s over. Done. Can’t be changed. I am a completely different person today than I was one year ago, and I’m a completely different person today than I was a few weeks ago. What can wash our sins away?? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! He can do it, just ask! We mess up, we are far from perfect, don’t let that drag you down, learn from it. You can be forgiven completely, just ask. Forgive don’t judge.

Don’t give up on people either. I know people that once the see so and so do this or that, its over, they judge them and won’t give them another chance, they give up on them. Forgive them, they need to be shown love and mercy, not hate and indecency. No one is perfect! Forgive, don’t judge! who are we to judge?

Let our actions define who we are. Let God take us from where we are to where He wants us to be. Let’s be a light for Him. Let’s show His love to all! Jesus has called us, let’s pick up our crosses, follow him, and fight!

I love you all!

JTum

Let me repeat that… Everything is God’s! We will be held accountable.

Michael’s message really made me think of whats important in life. Or better said, what’s eternal. Through God’s grace and mercy, we’re eternal. We’ll spend eternity in Heaven, or Hell. Oh yes, they’re real.

I don’t know about you, but I struggle with selfishness daily. I spend hours daily thinking and dreaming of “things” I want. For example, lately I’ve been caught up thinking of ways to supe up my car… and getting more drums is always on my mind. I have both a car and drums. They arent going to heaven with me. I wish I spent more time thinking of ways to further God’s kingdom than ways to further Jordan’s. This is something I’m starting to work on. My first challenge is Oak Leaf’s Redemption Project. On March 8th the Redemption Project is ending. We need around 200 grand so that we can finish the house of rock. The 200 grand is going to come by the church members, not a bank. I pray that this gets done.

Ya know, Satan sucks. Thinking on it, it blows my mind how often I fall into his traps. I can’t believe that after all that God has done for me… I still find myself putting me before Him.

Live for God. Live with God.

God rocks!

We started out the day with a killer breaky. Then we headed out for Camp Sandmann. When we arrived, we realized we were in the wrong spot, so we proceeded to Red Top Mountain State Park. We unloaded and checked in all of our gear, and we were ready to go. Meetings began at around 9ish, and at about 15 minutes til 10, we were able to recieve our first map, we chose canoeing (seeing how we were unable to train, and didn’t know how long it would take us to complete it). Once we all agreed on canoeing, we recieved our canoe plots, and out map. Using our UTM plotter, map, and coordinates, we were ablt to effectively plot out points. As soon as the clock stroke 10, we were off on an adventure of a lifetime!!! We ran our canoe down to shore, threw the padals in, pushed off, and were off to our first checkpoint! However; for the first 5 minutes, we couldnt figure out why that no matter what we did, we just kept going in a circle. Finally we heard a voice from shore calling out “You’re in the canoe backwards!” Hahaha talk about embaracing. So we managed to all get turned around. Canoeing is easier when you’re in the canoe the right way, fyi. The canoeing part was rough, imagine sitting in a canoe, padaling your heart out for 2 hours straight. It was crazy, but finally we made it back.

Next we decided to trek, so we went to the trek table and recieved our map and coordinates. We plotted them, and were on our way. Right off the bat we made a mistake, we mis-judged roads. We thought we were further ahead than we actually were, so we darted off into the wooods. It took us about 10 minutes of wandering around to realize we were in the wrong spot. Once we figured it out, we took route to the right spot and found our first checkpoint. We couldn’t find checkpoint #5 for anything! It seriously took us alteast 30 minutes to find it. It was hidden on a pinninsula, and we always seemed to be on the wrong one. Never-the-less; we found it and were on our way.

We made it back to base-camp, turned in our trekking map, and recieved our bike coordinates. Kempo plotted them as Jon and I ate a few starburst for energy (believe it or not, this race is totally exhausting). Soon we were on our way. Biking is always fun, but it’s a whole lot tougher when your energy tank is on empty. We were not aloud to ride on the roads, so we had to ride in the ditch beside it until we got to the Iron Hill trails, a couple miles away. We powered through the biking (the last rush… wanting to finish for good). We had one major problem, we missed a checkpoint and had to backtrack 3 miles to get it. It took a while. But we made it back!

Team Alpha Super Awesome Cool Dynamite Wolf Squadron finished in 5 hours 26 minutes. Earning the 3rd place trophy, and completely stoked!

We’re all in a race, the race of life.  Jesus said in Hebrew chapter 12 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning it’s shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” I think a common misconception about the journey for a christian, is that it’s going to be easy. Oh how far that is away from the truth. In a chrstian walk, we find that it gets harder, much harder. Satan starts throwing things at you left and right! Trying to bring you down so that you lose your heart and faith. In my opinion, it’s just like an adventure race. It’s hard as mess.

As a chrisian, we all have a common goal, Oak Leaf sums it up well. We want “God to take us from where we are, to where he wants us to be”. Simple concept, but we might not have a clue where and what exactly he wants. He may want us to go to Africa. Or work here. Get up super early, I don’t know. Possibilities are endless.

It’s hard. It’s an adventure. We have one goal, to try and be as much like Jesus as we can be. Let’s help eachother get there.

First off, Jesus is a dang master of parables. No joke.

In Luke 16, we see that Jesus discusses some money issues. he clearly states that “… you cannot serve both God and money.” True story. Thankfully this hasn’t ever been too big of an issue for seeing how I’m always broke. But man, money can sure have some power over some people, thats clear to see in the world today. People cant take money to heaven, so why store it up here. Of course, thats easy for me to say..

In Luke 17, Jesus says ” Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to the person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck…” uh oh. I sin everyday. lots. This is pretty scary. Think about it, God knows everything we do, and we’re all going to be judged. Yikes! Also in chapter 17, Jesus tells of the 2nd coming of Jesus. Which I just so happened to have learned this past Sunday that the 2nd coming is mentioned in the Bible 8 times more than the 1st!! (fun facts) 

Perhaps one of my favorite parables that Jesus ever told, is found in Luke 18. It’s the parable of the persistent widow. It’s told to the disciples to encourage them to always pray, and never give up on it. The parable goes a little something like this: … in a town there was a judge who didn’t fear God, and didn’t care about men. There was also a widow in this town who would come everyday to the judge and beg “Grand me justice against my adversary”. For some time, he refused. Finally the judge became tired of her and granted her wish so that she would bother him no more. The Lord then said “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly…” I really needed to hear this. I think that in this day and age, we forget the power of prayer. Atleast  I do. The power of prayer is ridiculous, and we need to remember that. And with that said, I constantly see myself giving up on a prayer, or simply just not praying enough. I don’t recall myself ever crying out to God day and night. Do you? Shouldn’t  we?

In Luke 19, we hear the story of Zaccheus… he was a wee little man. Jesus then had a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The people rejoiced at his entry! Jesus proceeded to the temple, where he became enraged by seeing people in there selling! He said to them all, after flipping over the tables, “My house is a house of prayer, you have made it a den of thieves!” 

In Luke 20, the chief priests and teachers of the Law question Jesus’ authority, and of course Jesus owned them with words of wisdom.

In 21, Jesus gives more information on the end times. He says there will be many false prophets saying they are Jesus, and many false people stating that it is the end times. Jesus then says clearly that we will know the true end when we see the signs. 

In Luke 22, it states that satan entered Judas, and Judas went to the teachers of the law and agreed to betray Jesus. Jesus had his last supper and told his disciples that he was going to be betrayed by one of them and condemned to death. But on the 3rd day, he would rise again! Peter tells Jesus that he is ready to die with him, but Jesus tells him that “…before the rooster crows.. you will deny me 3 times…”. While praying on the Mount of Olives, Judas comes and betrays Jesus with a kiss. And he is arrested. Peter follows, and while in town, he is questioned 3 times, and each time he deny’s Jesus, immediately following the 3rd denial, the rooster crows. Thats pretty crazy.

In Luke 23, Jesus goes before pilate and the people. The people vote to have him crucified. And it is so…

In 24, Jesus rises from the dead!!! Just like he said!!! Flippin Gnarly!!!!

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