Adult Content (NOT!!)

I was wondering. The other day I was talking to one of my friends about blogging and mentioned that I wanted more people to visit my site. Well, I thought to myself, if the title was "XXX" or "adult content" or something to that effect my site would get many more hits! Isn't that sad? Sad to think that the men in our society are more enamored with naked woman then they are with our Creator! I would be willing to bet that is true for many "christian" men too! There were times in my life when I struggled with that sin and I think that if you asked any honest man they would admit that at one time or another they had the same struggle. It is very common. More common then anyone wants to admit! I was reading shortly after that on http://teampyro.blogspot.com/ and there are some great posts on this type of sin and how to deal with it. One of the things that they mention is the way women dress, even at church that can cause men to stumble. Please be careful ladies, help a brother out. It's hard enough this summer season with worldly women dressed the way they are, we should not have to deal with this problem at church too!

Adirondack Bible Chapel

I am so excited to see what God has in store for me and Adirondack Bible Chapel! This Sunday will mark a new beginning for me at ABC. I would like to thank everyone for their prayers as I struggled with this change in my life! I have so many godly friends that love me! I am so blessed! Thank you Jesus, I praise you. The more I get involved the more I see that there is more to be involved in! I pray for God's guidance and wisdom as I seek to find my place in this ministry. I have spent some time familiarizing myself with the ABC website http://www.adirondackbible.org/ . Check it out! Just a church being the church. What a foreign idea to the main stream churches of today! I went to prayer meeting Wednesday night, it was pretty close to a full house and guess what? We prayed! In a world where many churches don't pray any more its no wonder that folks fail to see the power of prayer! I got news for you. The same God who created this place we call earth and the universe around it is still in the business of answering prayer! It is my prayer that anyone reading this will be able to experience God at work in their lives and the lives of the people around them! I know for a fact that I am an answer to prayer! I praise God for the many people who are praying for me! Please don't stop! It is indeed exciting to watch God work and I look forward to seeing what He is going to do! John 16:24 says "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete." I don't think that I know what complete joy is but I want it! John 14:14 says "You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it." This is not talking about asking for a car or a house, its talking about asking according to Gods will. Our will as Christians should be in accordance with Gods will as we seek to be like Jesus. He does answer our prayers! We just need to live our lives in such a manner that we are bringing glory to God.

Changes

Yesterday was a very hard day for me. Yesterday was the day that I let the cat out of the bag that I will be moving on to another church. It is a decision that I have prayed about for some time and one that I did not come to lightly. I am doing my best to lead a spirit filled life and I feel that God is calling me Adirondack Bible Chapel. I will be leaving a church that I love. A church that is growing and has meant so much to me over the past 5 or so years. I will be going back to a church that I also love. I know that my decision to leave NCBF will hurt some people, confuse others. I am deeply sorry to those that my leaving hurt. I feel terrible for my pastor whom I have spoken with on several occasions since the decision was made. I just pray that he truly understands why I made the decision that I did. It is not personal. I pray that he doesn't think any less of me. I praise God for the support I am receiving from folks at both churches. It is awesome to be a part of something bigger then ABC or NCBF. I am a part of Christs church. Thank you Jesus! I have to keep reminding myself to "Be joyful always", and to "Consider it pure joy". Please Father continue to draw all involved closer to you! That is my hearts cry.

Randy Alcorn

I just finished reading a book called the "Treasure Principle" by Randy Alcorn. What an awesome read! It's a small book that I finished in about 2 hours. Small books that change your life and the way you look at key parts of your christian walk are great! This particular book is about giving. A very tender topic in today's society! There is kind of a "don't ask don't tell" feel to giving today. Well, how are we supposed to learn to give if we are not taught? If we don't talk about it? Randy talks about giving to get rewards. Rewards that will be waiting for us when we get to heaven. Stack those treasures up in heaven where you will have an eternity to enjoy them! I have been struggling with the issue of giving. I am selfish! He also talked about how your heart follows your money. For example: Spend all of your money on yourself, you are important. Spend too much money on your home, you guessed it, your home is important. All that we spend our money on is important to us. I want to spend more of my money for Gods purposes. I want Gods blessings. I want my Heavenly Father to be more important to me. I want me to be less important! Oh...all the times I talked about "my money" I know that its not really mine at all, it's Gods money. I wouldn't have anything if it weren't for my Creator! There is so much more in this little treasure of a book! Read it if you want your life to be changed for the better! On a side note! Alcorn also wrote a book called the Purity Principle. Also very good! I read it 3 times! Get reading folks!

Deerfoot Pics

Well, I promised some pictures of our day a Deerfoot and here they are! The first is Tyler and I trying to look happy. Not that we weren't! The second is Ty saying goodbye to his dog April! They are so cute! The third one is Ty playing teather ball, a Deerfoot tradition. The last pic is of Ty and his "best friend at Deerfoot" Luke. Ty met Luke his first year at camp and they shared a cabin every year since! I was very glad to see that Luke was there!

deerfoot

Well, today I dropped Tyler off at Deerfoot http://deerfoot.org/. It is a christian camp for boys in the Adirondacks. It is about 5 miles from my home. My boy is for sure growing up in a hurry! This is his third year at DL. The two previous years when it was time for Daddy to go, he cried. It was terrible! It was so hard to leave him! This year? He took it like a man, albeit a little man, not a tear shed! I am so proud of him! I will miss him so much! (I already do) He will be there for two weeks! I'm sure I will miss him more then he will miss me! He is going to be very busy indeed!

I little history break.
I was a camper at DL lightyears ago. As a matter of fact I got saved at DL! As you can imagine deerfoot has a very big place in my heart! I was a camper for 4 years and then worked there as a counsoler for a year. Some of the best times of my life! The history of Deerfoot is awesome. The current camp director was a counsoler there when I was a camper. I knew him as Chief Ron and so does my son. I have many friends that I was a camper with that I am still friends with now! How cool is that! Folks I grew up with two weeks at a time, then worked with and now are sending there kids. Tyler is friends with the kids of the parents I was friends with 25 years ago! How cool is that! I will say it yet again, I am so blessed!

I did take some pics but you will have to wait as I can't find my USB cable! The pics will follow...I hope!

Friends

I am starting to notice more and more that I have many, many "friends" who claim to be Christians. Most of these friends live their lives as they want to. They say they are Christians but there is no evidence. I was just looking through my Facebook friends list and there are many who profess Christianity. There are very few who actually live it. When my friends look at me do they think the same thing about me? I like to think that they could not possibly think that about me! I am sure though, that some of those friends, friends that I don't see very often do think that about me! How convicting! I do my best to live my life to glorify God. I also fail miserably more often then I would like to admit. My true friends know the real me. They know my struggles, they also know that I love Jesus. My friend and I were talking the other night about heaven. I truly can't wait! Life is hard. Sin is inevitable. I want to be in glory with my Heavenly Father. I want to know Christ better, I want to see Him and fall at his feet and praise HIM for His love for me, for what he went through on the cross for me! A wretched sinner who doesn't deserve even a second look from a holy God! Thank you Jesus! Thank you Father for choosing me. I don't deserve it for a second! I deserve hell, eternal damnation. Yes, I am a sinner. Thank God I am a sinner....saved....by grace. I praise you Jesus. Help me to live for You.

Frustration!

As I sit here at my parents home, looking at the Sacandaga river gently flowing to the south, I am troubled. There is so much going on in my mind. Way to much to share it all with you!! There is however, one part of my mind that I want to share and I would really appreciate some input! I want you to think about it for a while and I want you to share with me! Here we go! I know that there is absolute truth. Gods word is absolute truth. I believe that with all of my heart. I believe that God and His word are the eternal truth. 2nd Timothy 3:16 talks about all scripture being God breathed, God wrote it! God is truth! God's word is truth! Absolute truth! I know this and I hope that you do too! I have a question though. Is there absolute right? Is there absolute wrong? Don't misunderstand me here. I know it is absolutely wrong to steal candy from a baby. I also know that it is absolutely right to help an old lady carry her groceries. My question has more to do with the grey areas in the middle. Are there degrees of right or wrong? Are there situations and decisions that we make that aren't necessarily right or wrong? Can my conscience be clear no matter what I decide to do or how I decide to deal with a certain decision? Do all of the decisions that I make have to be right or wrong? Let me give you an example from my life. I am living in a situation where I don't know what is right. I really do not know "what would Jesus do?" It is something that I struggle with daily. I really don't' know what to do. Whatever I do is bound to hurt someone. The easiest solution would be to let things go the way that they are. Is that the right decision? Is it wrong? I don't know! My son Tyler really wants to live with me and go to school up here. He currently lives with his mother in the Albany area. I believe Ty would be happy here. I also know that he needs his mother. Ty does spend about 50% of his time up here with me. I know he won't be able to see his mom that much if he lives up here. It gets a little more complicated then that but you get the jest of my dilemma. What is right? Is there a wrong decision? I pray about it often and I still don't know! It is indeed frustrating!

Fathers day

Well, it's that time of the year again where we recognize our fathers for the special folks that they are. I am blessed to have a father who is indeed one of a kind! He raised all of his children to not only be productive members of society but also love the Lord. I am very thankful that I have that kind of example in my life to use to raise my son Tyler. It is often a tough job to raise kids according to scripture. My Dad did it! I love the fact that I can still lean on my father when I have questions or concerns about decisions that I have to make regarding the upbringing of my boy. I praise God for that! I also praise God that he chose me to be His child! He is my Hevenly Father. Like my earthly father, He loves me, He wants whats best for me. Its amazing to think that I have two Fathers who love me so much! I am indeed blessed beyond what I deserve!

Ministry

This photo may not look like too much but it means the world to me! This is a photo of a youth rally we had at Camp of the Woods. We didn't have many kids show up but that's OK because all the kids that were supposed to be there were! The guy in the front is my brother Mike. He is leading the group in song. His wife Laura is playing the piano. My brother-in-law Dan is the guy in the back with the blue shirt. He did the bible lesson. I am the guy taking the picture and doing the A.V. stuff. You may ask, "Why in the world did you waste your time taking such a lame picture?" Well let me tell you! In all the years I have been involved in youth ministry I have never before this day had the opportunity to minister with my family! It was truly an awesome experience! I am blessed. My mother, father, all my siblings and their spouses know Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives. Not many people I know of can say that! I look forward to doing this again someday soon! I praise God for my family and the chance to minister with them!

Cross training

As you may or may not know I am the youth director at my church. Our youth program is called Cross Training. We have discontinued the regular meetings of Cross Training for the summer and I am trying to think of a topic to study for the next year. At this time I am somewhere in between apologetics and creationism. Two great topics that deserve studying! I am leaning towards creationism. One of the resources I am looking into to put together a syllabus is http://www.drdino.com/. Dr. Hovind is very entertaining! More importantly I believe at this point he is also very biblical. I have come to realize that our youth desire to be entertained. So at this point I do need to entertain these kids, but I also need to share the truth of God's word with them. That comes into my thought process as I try to determine what to study at Cross Training. How do I keep these kids interested in eternity when everything they are interested is just a click away? I have a friend who is a youth leader in a church where the kids seem to be more interested in what Gods word has to say then they are at my church. I think that this interest goes back to the parents of these kids. These parents are at church whenever the doors are open. These parents love Jesus with all of their hearts. These parents live their faith! I really think that this is where my problem begins. With the parents. If we as parents show our children that we love the Lord Jesus Christ it will rub off on them! If we live our lives as Christ lived His life our children will see it and respond. It is a lot of work to entertain these kids! I just hope and pray that the entertainment will have eternal value. I pray that the time I spend with these young people will have some positive Christlike impact on them, that they will see that Christ is alive in me, and that they will want what Christ has to offer!

Bio's

I may be beating a dead horse here but this is what is important to me!!

I just spent the last hour and a half downloading different biography's off of www.desiringgod.org. These are bio's of some of the great Christian men in history. Pastor John Piper studies the lives of these men to share them with you and me. I wonder if any of these men ever thought that their lives would be studied by others. I really don't think so! These men live humble lives viewing themselves as the worst of sinners. These men lived their lives in such a way that their lives made a difference, not only historically but also eternally! Did Edwards think that we would look back at the way that he lived and the things that he did and try to learn from them? Did Luther rebel against the Catholic church for his glory? Did Brainerd minister to the Indians just to prove he was a man? Did Moody or Spurgeon preach to the thousands just to lift themselves up? All of these men did what they did for Gods glory! We make decisions every day. What are those decisions based on? The decisions these men made and the lives they lived were not only to bring to bring glory to God, but to share that love with everyone their paths crossed. I don't know that I can say that about my life and the decisions that I make. I do pray that eventually I would be able to say that I live my life completely for my savior. My selfishness prevents me from doing so. My flesh is so strong. Help me Father to live my life for you and you alone! My intent here is not to lift these men up as perfect. They were sinners just like me. They are however men to look up to. I have been blessed by looking into some of these men's lives. I have been challenged to live my life according to Gods eternal word. I thank God for the lives of these men!

V.O.M.

Last night at church we had a gentleman come and share with us about the persecuted Church. He represented Voice of the Martyrs. The violence in this world toward Christians never ceases to amaze, shock, sadden, and convict me. We just have it too easy here in the USA! To be a "Christian" here all we have to do is look like all the other "Christians". What do all the other "Christians" look like? To be completely honest with you, I don't know that I can answer that question! Most of the "Christians" here look like every other person I see. They all dress the same. Act the same. Talk the same. In a nut shell I don't think I could tell a "Christian" from a non-christian unless of coarse we were in a church! Then I could easily tell because everyone who goes to church is a "Christian"! Right? My point is, that here in America we are all "Christians" because it costs nothing. What is the true cost of being a Christian? Well, we give our lives to Jesus totally and completely. It may not mean too much here sometimes but it has a very different spin on it in countries where giving your life to Jesus could very well mean your life! Once word gets out that you are a Christian you life and in some cases the lives of your family are in danger. Sometimes these Christians are horribly tortured. I just read an article about a Christian having his fingernails (all 10 of them) pulled out! There is very little doubt that these people are Christians. You see, I can tell you that I am a Christian and Jesus is Lord of my life and have no fear that there is someone behind a tree with an AK-47 just waiting to kill me and my family. In fact there are times here when being a "Christian" is trendy! How dare us! How can we take what God did for us on the cross so lightly! Jesus is real! He really did die on a cross to take away our sins! He really did raise from the grave and He really does sit next to His Father in heaven! He really does love us! He really does want us to give our lives to Him! We are not supposed to look like every other person walking down the street! Our lives should make a difference for Jesus and His glory!

We need to pray for our brothers and sister who are being persecuted for their belief in Jesus Christ. I would encourage all of you to check out www.persecution.com/ . Their lives are making a difference! Is yours?

Consider it pure joy

Trials. We all go through them. Some people more graciously then others. I would like to share some scriptures with you. I Thess. 5:16-18 says " 16Be joyful always; 17pray continually; 18give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." James 1:2-4 talks about trials too. It says to "2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. This can be, and many times is, very tough medicine to take. It is a lot easier to quote those verses to someone who is hurting then it is actually apply them to your life when you are hurting. I have been run through the ringer more then once. I do my best now to look at life through scripture. It is a very hard thing to glorify God when we are hurt. My brother is currently going through a very tough time. I have had the opportunity to talk to him a couple of times and he is exemplifying the above verses. He is truly a testimony to me and I love and respect him for it. I know that he is walking in the spirit. I know that he is "considering it pure joy." I know that he is "giving thanks! " What a testimony to the power of Gods grace!

Cross Training

Cross Training is what we call our youth group at North Country Bible Fellowship. Last night was our last regularly scheduled meeting until next fall. We had 11 kids come out which is above average! I was very encouraged! We played a couple of wacky games and then my friend Doug shared his testimony with the kids. It was a great night! We had some new faces there. That always gets me excited! I know we had some kids who do not know Christ as their Lord. The gospel was clearly presented and I just pray that seeds were planted!

I have a question. How do you teach a teenager to respect property that is not their own? I have some kids that attend Cross Training on a regular basis that are very rowdy and don't seem to care if they abuse even destroy another persons property. Is that normal behavior for our teens today? I for one think that we as parents have lowered the bar for what we should expect from our children. We expect kids to do stupid things. We expect them to be disrespectful, disobedient, cruel, and neglectful. We don't lay down the law. We don't expect them to make a positive difference. Kids will be kids and that's OK. I don't think it is OK. I think we as parents need to not only expect more from our kids, we need to demand it! We have a generation of kids out there now who don't care about anything or anyone outside of themselves. What a tragedy! We expect these kids to grow up and lead this country? They can't even make their own bed or do their own laundry. They have been pampered from day one and expect the same treatment as young adults. As parents we are responsible to raise our children to be adults. As Christian parents we are raising our children according to biblical principles and standards. We are praying that our kids will grow to love God and His word. I think in a lot of cases our kids are no better off then the children of worldly parents. That should not be! We should expect even MORE from our kids. They are not just being kids! Kids can make a difference! Our kids will make a difference and it is up to us just what kind of difference these kids will make. Will we raise our kids for mediocrity or will we raise our kids to change the world for Gods glory. Remember, as Christians our kids are not our own! They are on loan from God! We will be held accountable for how we raise our kids! Scary thought! Let us make a difference in the lives of our kids.

Blogging

I am being discipled by a very dear friend of mine who once told me that he wanted to start a journal. He told me that you can learn so much from writings and journals of people who lived long ago. He also bought me the journal of David Brainerd as proof. I agree with my friend 100%. You can indeed learn much about a person by their writings. Not only can you learn but you can also be largely encouraged! There are a lot of godly men in our history who pored their hearts into their journals. Granted, they were probably not meant to be published, but it is beautiful to see the joy these men had. Especially in Brainerds case! He was a very sick man who managed to praise his God for everything in his life! This sick man spent his christian life on the mission fields to American Indians in the 1700's. It didn't matter how sick he was. He was obedient to God. He praised God. He adored God. He wasn't angry for being so sick. He was forever worshipful! I for one can learn a lot from a man like that! I have a God who loves me enough to sacrifice His Son for my sin, I live in the United States, I have shelter, health, food, clean water, family, friends, church, freedom, the list goes on and on. Yet it is so easy to complain!

As guys we are often "too tough" to share our emotions with others, especially if it's another guy. Well I would like to thank my friend for caring for me enough to share his life with me and let him know that I love him. I praise God for godly friends!

Struggles

Have you ever had one of those times in your life when things just don't click? You feel as though you are stuck in the mud? Not moving anywhere? I am really struggling with that in my spiritual life right now. I am in a bit of a dry place. I'm absorbed with me. I am the most selfish creature on the planet and I HATE IT! Why is it that my needs are more important to me then the needs of those that I love? Isn't' it amazing how sin just creeps in? A little thing here that is no big deal. Then another little thing. None of which are sin! All those little things start to add up and take our minds off of what really matters! That IS where sin comes in. That is where our minds are focused anywhere but on God. Sometimes I think that I am making myself an idol. Not that I am truly worshiping myself, but in my mind, in my secret place, I am the most important thing on this planet! I have to keep reminding myself that I'm nothing! I'm the worst of sinners! I don't deserve any of this love that God sent His son to die for! I am so unworthy! Hebrews talks about drawing near to God with your whole heart. I know that is all I need to do! Lord please help me to draw near to you with my whole heart! I need you!

I have rambled long enough! I hope that this post is not jumbled as my mind is!