Bible Plan I’m Working Through

www.bible.com/reading-plans/18669/day/5

Righteous Anger vs. Sinful Anger

This is a great bible plan so far for anyone struggling with anger in their lives. I’ve been known to get consumed with it and let it control my life, it’s the main reason I picked this specific plan!

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Let’s Change The World.

My entire life from birth to where I am now has been a blessing. God has had his hand guiding me step by step every single day.  Obviously, there’s been a lot of those days that I push his hand aside and go my own way and quite honestly, things always seem to start going from worse to even worse when I do it.  We are always fighting now, fighting the health officials who tell us to wear masks and stay 6 feet apart, fighting amongst each other because we don’t think we’re being treated right and think the worlds against us, not loving others, not helping others, not being kind to others…. The saddest thing about it all is that this is the world our children are growing up in, instead of showing them that we can overcome this, we are just spreading the same ashes that have been spread for years upon years.  Try planting some seeds in the ashes, see if we can grow something and create something better for our future generations.  The world has often said it doesn’t want God, but we need God more than ever.  Honestly, look in the Bible for gratitude, love, peace, hope, kindness…. it’s filled with those types of lessons to teach us.  Instead of trying to push God out of everything, why not just let Him do what He’s done best for the past thousand plus years and create a world filled with hope and love.  Unclench that fist and open up your hand for a handshake or a high five, uncross your arms for a hug, open your eyes to the possibilities of what can be instead of always focusing on what has been.  The only reason why the past isn’t behind us is because we keep digging it up and letting it repeat itself and show it’s ugly head.  We have ALL been blessed abundantly, we still have breath in our lungs, food in our bellies and usually a place to find shelter.  We have the freedom to speak what we want to speak, the freedom to be who we want to be, and the freedom to become something better than who we are today.  Let’s not waste our lives with spitting anger, let’s use our lives to make the place a better place than when we entered it.  Let’s create a masterpiece. May God give you strength and wisdom.

 

God bless

Movie Thoughts| Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

** THERE ARE SPOILERS PROBABLY SO DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE MOVIE YET AND ARE PLANNING ON WATCHING IT.  COME BACK AFTER AND READ IT THOUGH :)**

 

I watched this movie yesterday with my dad and enjoyed it.  Some movies leave you with the sense of being able to conquer the world (usually the superhero ones do this for me), while other movies don’t really do any of that, but are good and have powerful meanings behind them if you really think about it.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is one of those types that didn’t leave me wanting to conquer the world, but it was entertaining to watch and the more you think about it, the more you’d realize how profound of a movie it really is. It shows you that although you may have a bad past or that others may have “destined” you to do something, you are not held by those expectations.  You have the ability to create your own destiny, and in the world we live in I think that is extremely important to remember.  A lot of people might look at their lives and say “Well, I’m this way so I have to act this way” or “I was brought up with this as my surrounding, so I have to follow in those footsteps”.  In reality, we can be who we want to be, if you want to change the world, do it. No one is stopping you from doing amazingly extraordinary things with your life, except for yourself.  A lot of times that is where we get lost, we think we aren’t strong enough or aren’t capable of doing something, so we don’t even try.  We just sit back and let the world pass us by and don’t dare to dream of bigger dreams for ourselves.  This movie exemplifies that you can dare to dream big dreams and you can accomplish them.  Rey was “destined” to be on the dark side, and yet she dared to dream of a better life, and instead conquered the dark side, and she was willing to give up her own life to do it as well.  Ben was doing everything he could to be a major player on the dark side, but the world had different plans for him and he became a powerful helper for the Jedi force.  I know that last one kind of goes against what I’ve been writing about, but you’ll have to work with me on this one.  The world is going to tell you sometimes that you can’t do something and allow your fear to conquer any possibilities of good things happening, just like in the movie when they were losing all hope because the darkness was playing tricks on them, but than there’s that still small voice that tells you to keep hope alive, and when you listen to it, you realize you were never alone at all but you have had an enormous community of friends and family backing you every step of the way.  Create your dreams and follow your passions.  If you fail, so what.  If you fall down, so what. Get back up, dust yourself off and keep moving forward.  You may get hit and take a few steps backward, but regain your strength and step foward again and again until you are living the dreams you have envisioned.

 

God bless and don’t forget to smile!!

 

If you have any success stories of you following your dreams, make sure you comment below or email me and let me know! I’d love to hear them!!

 

 

Be Radiant.

Everything changed for me in college, I wish I could say I deserved all the good things that have happened to me and that I worked hard to achieve what I have achieved.  I’d be lying though, it was God all along.  Every time he has opened my eyes to the greater purpose I could have for my life, I have forcefully shut them again and gone down the wrong path.  I was part of a christian organization in college called Campus Crusade for Christ.  Through my years as part of that organization, I became more and more prideful, to the point where I would think I had something to do with the success of it.  I had nothing to do with it though, it was and will always be God.  He worked through ordinary people to do extraordinary things, he brought people together that would remain friends to this day.  You know Steph Mox that I have talked about on this site in the past?  She was the beginning, she was the glue that held our group together and continues to shine in ways I could only dream of.  Her husband’s light combined with hers has reached places that I don’t know if I’ll ever see in my lifetime.  I took a different route, one that not many college graduates take in life, the path of a custodian.  When you think of grand jobs, I guarantee you never think of a custodian as one of those jobs.  It’s a job of little thanks, lots of messes and lots of just blah.  It’s the perfect job for someone who needs to learn how to serve others without getting praised for it.  Because of “Cru”, I had acquired the taste of serving others.  It was something that I felt as a “Christ-like” person, I should be good at doing and strive to do more often.  The thing is, I really really like praise, I really really enjoy awards and the pride of making things happen.  That, my friends, is why I am who I am today.  I am not a good person, but instead I struggle with pride.  To the point where I get literally angry if other people don’t understand how good I am and if they can’t be as good as I am, then to (heck) with them.  I don’t deserve this life and I don’t deserve the great things that have happened to my life.  I am a sinner in need of a savior and my life is a total mess.  But, that’s where my faith starts to shine through.  I know that Jesus died for me, and I know that with his strength and through Him I may find a light that has always extinguished the darkness within me.  He opened my eyes to the needs of the world and given me the jobs to accomplish those needs.  I have one wish, one real dream….. that is that at the end of my life, I will have an overflowing funeral with those who I have helped in one way or another.  You may not understand and that’s quite alright, I don’t understand it either.  I do understand one thing though, that’s that I have been given everything in life so that I may use it to help others.  I don’t always like helping others or doing what I have to do to help them, I complain all the time at work because of it and swear a lot because of it.  But, in the end of the day, when I remember the scriptures that have been instilled in me, I remember that it doesn’t matter what I want or how I feel….it just matters that His glory be seen and His will be done.   I started a ministry fund in college, since than I have added to it and when I prayed for a sustainable way to add to it, God answered me.  I became poor. Well, to some they said I was poor, I never felt poor because I had everything still.  But, through that, I picked up a second part-time job and a week or so later, got Full-time at my main part-time job.   Being full-time allowed me to get back on my feet with that paycheck and live off of that paycheck, making my second part-time paycheck open to be used to grow my ministry fund.  After a year or so of being full-time, that’s exactly what I did.  I have been blessed with being able to sponsor four kids, donate to a survival program for newborn babies, and do countless other things with the money that I have earned.  The greatest joy in life doesn’t come from owning gadgets and gizmos and the latest technology, it comes from getting letters from kids and hearing about how you are changing their lives.  I am a horrible person, a worldly person, but God has used me to do extraordinary things.  I will never deserve it, I will never be able to earn it, but it was a free gift that was given to me and I cherish it more than life itself.  Cleaning toilets for a living just got a new appreciation from me, it allows God to work through me and it allows Him to teach me how to shed this pride and depend SOLELY on Him.  Every hardship sheds new light on how powerful God is and the magnificent things he can accomplish if you put your trust in Him.  I pray you will give Him a chance as I have and see if he can spark a flame within you that will burn bright and be Radiant.

 

God bless

GUATEMALA 2018

I have just come back from my third trip to Guatemala. It was an exciting trip that had a few new faces added to the mix.  The stories we heard and the successes that the organization we help, Common Hope, down there are awe inspiring and life changing.  So what did we do down there?

We built a home, perhaps I should start saying shelter instead of house because most people’s views of a house I feel are like the ones you see in the States here, and this was nothing like that.  It was a four walled, two room shelter.  They upgraded it since last time we were down there with glass windows and a Plexiglas center in the roof to allow light in.  We poured a cement floor for them as well so they didn’t have to live on a dirt floor.  My personal contributions to the project were helping with the floor, putting the roof up and doing a small section of siding on one side.  This year we built the whole house from scratch, where usually the panels are largely created in the past and we just put the house together.

We went on social work visits, flies on the wall in the social work visits that the organization goes on numerous times a day.  We experienced how they go through a social work visit, got to ride chicken buses, and saw how different families live. Some live off a little better than others. But most people have dirt floors and metal walls/roofs.

We went to a school, four groups taught four classes how to do math activities. One group, my group, taught the kids how to play “spoons” which we turned into “pencils” because we didn’t have enough spoons to go around.  My particular group didn’t get it until I had one of our other vision team members come and help.  The two girls who ran this activity are seniors in High School and this was their first trip as part of a Vision Team! They were the greatest!! Another important part of the educational section of this visit was we learned a statistic that was something like there was a 16% graduation rate, than with 25 years of Common Hope, the rate raised to 35%.  But get this, just 5 years later and the rate went from 35% to 60%!!!!  This is incredibly awesome knowing that the families are realizing the importance of education in their lives and that they are sticking with it all the way to the end.  AND the communities around the ones that Common Hope is currently working with, are starting to COME to Common Hope and looking for help as well, which is a huge deal down there.  The word of mouth and the success they are having in the organization is spreading like wildfire and they are spreading out!!

We went to a coffee farm,  we learned all about the process of making coffee from an old Common Hope employee and he took us up a mountain to his patch of land where he grows his famous coffee.  We got to pick coffee for a while and it was dirty, tough work!  One of our trucks even got stuck for about an hour on the way back and it look pretty much a village to get us out! It was cool to see the Guatemalans come to help out their fellow worker and work together to fix the problem at hand.

We went on sponsorship visits, I got to personally meet our families sponsored child with my dad this year. He lives in a community known as San Rafael.  We got to go to his home and see his whole family (minus his dad who was out in the fields working).  He has two older siblings, a brother and a sister. He also had two younger sisters.  We played spanish bingo with him, gave him two books to read.  And after a very exciting visit, the mother was gracious enough to give us (my dad, myself, the social worker, and the translator) all bags of tomatoes, which was their livelihood.  She told our translator that they were the first crop of the year and that by giving us them, it was like planting a seed and a thank you to God for the blessing of a good crop.  I was also able, thanks to a very kind vision team member, to sponsor another child this time down there through a split sponsorship.  We got to meet him luckily on the same trip and he is a stud as well, he is in 5th grade and he is the top of his class.  He wanted to be a lawyer. And for a lot of the visit, we shared pictures with each other.  They have a beautiful family. The dad, again, was out working. But the mom was there with his two little sisters. I’m excited to go back in two years and see the two sponsored kids again!!

The people of Guatemala are amazing and so incredibly generous.  I wish I could live down there.  The stories we heard were tremendous and the work that Common Hope is doing is awe inspiring and changing lives both in Guatemala and around the world.  We get to literally see the world changing for the better down there and it’s a refreshing look to get.  May we SHINE our lights in the darkness and help ALL in need.

 

God bless,

 

Matt