Break My Son's Heart Please

Last year I made my first ever trip out of Iowa. That's right, I have been stuck in this corn prison for 15 years and finally I am going to see the rest of the world...or at least Denver. So in April of 2007 we packed our bags and headed for our 14 hour trip across Nebraska and into Colorado to visit the Mile High City. What a wonderful time. I had nothing but fun on that trip and every minute was ejoyable.

The reason I was there was because my church decided to take a Bible Quizzing team to competition that year and I was asked to be part of the team. We spent every Thursday studying many of the lessons we learned that year and the Bible in general. So when April came around it was pretty exciting. We got there and I was shocked from the beginning. Being to see mountains up close for the first time was amazing. It was hard imagining the huge monstrous mounds. Then the city was spectacular too. I remember going in ther and seeing wavering skyscrapers, roller coasters, and a three story tall blue bear looking into large glass building in the first five minutes we were there.

Competition was great too. We, surprisingly, made it to the silver round which is awesome for noobs like us. But the greatest thing about being in Denver was the worship. I remeber the song leader was a local band that had a little of national fame, but still not well known or mainstream. His name was Danny Oertli. I loved his songs and especially the stories behind them. One in particular that stuck out in my mind was his song "Thought You Should Know."

It really challenged your thinking about how you pray. His story went something like this: He was in his son's room who was about a year old and he was praying for his son. Danny had already lost his wife, remarried with a new child and had an adopted child and this kid was the new one. Well, he didn't want anything bad to happen to his son considering that he would grow up with a wierd family background it could case some hindrence for him. We prayed for a bubble to be around his son that he would go through life without any pain or troubles and that everything would be a happily ever after. Right then he sweared he could feel Jesus there tapping him on the shoulder...and there he realized. He realized that he wanted his son to be broken, because when people are broken and humbled in life that is the time when they cling to the Word and God, that is when they find God and grow, that is when they realize that God is there to comfort us in the hard times and He will pick us back up. Psalms 34:18 is my life verse because of this.

Isn't that how we should also act towards ourselves? We can't ask for God to take us down the happy trail of life with the smiling lambs and the pretty butterflies. Sometimes He will take us through that dark place that doesn't have any light. But the great thing is that He will guide us, and we will grow stronger through Him. He puts us through trials. We can't pray for an easier time, we have to pray for the most difficult trials that we can bear with Christ. (Which is nearly everything.) So this is my prayer, "God, will you please put me through trials this summer and for the rest of the year and my life. God will you please test me, so I can show your strenght. You. Are. Awesome."

"Forget About Sex"

"What in the world is wrong with girls? Especially high school girls?"
Actually...nothing.
"You mean you like guys?"
No.

That's right I don't plan on dating any girl (or guy for that matter) while I am in high school. There is just no need for me to pursue a relationship that I have no idea where it is going anyway. So, why does everybody else want to do it. (Besides our natural sinful urge of sex, and the underlying meaning of sex pretty much everywhere and in everything.) Well, we sort of model after our parents and the teenagers that are older than us that we see on TV and secretly aspire to be. That's right, you all wanted to be Zack Morris when you were growing up. Just kidding, I don't actually know how many people have seen Saved By the Bell Actually that would be reading this. Anyways, the fact is that we are subliminally taught to date others starting at a young age.

For instance look at the two four year olds Mark and Lucy who play fun holding hands. Lucy is the only one who shows that she likes it but Mark secretly does. What do we do about this behavior? "Awwww. How cute," is probably our first reaction. Then we like them to get together more often since we see they get along better. In fact, some hyper-paranoid parents might actually attempt to keep them together till marriage. To get to my point, we are encouraging them that this attraction between male and female is a good thing and they should do it more often. Bad choice parents. (note: I am not encouraging the break up of several thousand four-year-old couples out there by parents means.)

We then look at the teenagers are dating a new person each week on TV and they are even more attracted to the opposite sex than before, even though we don't know why. Why are we constantly teaching kids that dating at extremely immature ages is an acceptable thing. Well, I guess it is in American culture, but if you were to think about it real hard you would arrive at something else.

First, as we are in high school we are still not technically adults. Nothing says that we are mature enough to date the opposite sex then. In fact, at this time is when our hormones are all out of whack, so who knows what our relationships are messed up too, and this alters our concept of what dating really is. Not to mentino, we are still not old enough to be able to date others. We have many other things in life we are still trying to figure out for example how to socially react to other people, what do we want to do for the rest of our lives, where do we want to go to college, our own self-identity. Learning what dating is at this age is almost impossible and our whole view is changed.

Secondly, if you think hard about it what is dating all about. Well, if you were to take it all the way back to Anglo-Saxon era and shortly after that all the way up till American culture was founded, it was originally called courtship. Courtship was when suitors, who were almost always male, "dated" other girls to find the one they loved and the one they were to marry. And this is how dating started. So the point is that dating is originally for finding your second half. And let's face it, if you're not ready to marry you're not ready to date.

The last one is a trippy issue that is fought between many people, christians and atheists and other's alike. If we are to date when our hormones are like this, and our image is tainted by the media, we WILL have temptations for anything and everything, just about. I want to stay pure for my future bride. I want to give her the best gift I could possibly give her someday and that is my virginity. I think that sex is not the most important thing in my life (it is only a benefit for my wife and loving her when that time comes) so experience is not an issue at all here. Plain and simple, sex before marriage is a bad thing.

Now I know that dating doesn't automatically lead to sex, but the temptation is still their and I would just assume to not dawdle in it. I've got enough on my plate as it is and I don't want to add to it. Now for you people who are under 20 years of age, I'm not saying for you to devote your life to celebesy now, I just want to tell you to think carefully when you decide to to start "dating" someone. You need to understand exactly what you are doing.

Get Away From the Big Fish Now!

Don't you just love listening to the radio? Turing it on everytime you get in the car, or get into your room. You play it while you do your homework, or just when you're writing blog posts. (Guess what I'm doing right now?) I love hitting the radio button and tuning into 89.1. So what song is playing? Awww man, not this one again.

Unfortuantely that is my reaction to most of the time when I turn on the radio. And you know what the problem is with this. It has to do with the social hierchy of mucic, and if you have no idea what I just said it has to do mainstream music. That's the music that the general audience just loves. And real music fantatics hate. Most Christian radio stations only really play the same 100 songs over and over again because that is what the general Christian audience likes. UGH!! I probably know the lyrics to every one of those songs. What is wrong with playing the variety of music and hearing stuff you've never heard all the time. That's what makes music great, right? Variety.

Please don't hear me wrong on this. I do like a lot of the 100 songs that are played over and over again. But when it is all that you listen to you really get sick of it. I want to hear something different once and a while. Unfortunately radio stations don't like that because the general audience (the audience that only tunes in once and a while) likes to hear the music they like when they tune in. So what about the rest of us. I guess we just crawl into a corner and go hysterical due to the brainwashed song listing that goes on. All. The. Time.

Lucky me, I have broken this auditory cycle, and I have found the magical cure that will help us cope with music again. Live on music die hards.

My first reccomendation is theBlast.fm. Amazing live radio station. It is an Internet live streaming music channel that plays hundreds of aritsts and thousands of songs. These songs are all christian and primarily alternative rock. I know isn't it a step off from all the sameness of your radio. And the best thing is that they minmally play anything considered mainstream. I love theBlast.fm. The last bonus is that their are minmal commercials and the commercials they do have only promote their radio. And you can't deal with that every once and a while?

My second reccomendatino is Pandora Radio. It is also a live streaming radio online...only you are the DJ, kind of. You get to pick an artist or song you really like and they will start playing songs a lot like that, non stop. And you get to say whether you like that song or not which will further shape what songs will start playing. Of course you don't get to pick exactly what you want to listen to but some of the songs do repeat, randomly and rarely. Also their is no advertisments in the middle of your music either. Oh, what sweet bliss. I love Pandora.

Well, I guess this wasn't some philosophical prompt, like my previous ones or future ones might be, but I do like to express my behavior on something like this, and give a few suggestions to those who are thinking like me, if there are such people. Hey...thanks for reading this.