In Vain...

3rd commandment...

"You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name."

Many know this command but don't really understand its meaning. The NIV words it as you see above. In other translations, it is stated as taking the Lord's name in vain. This generation sees this as not to saying the name Jesus Christ in anger or to put the word "damn" after the name of God. Although it is true that doing those things is vainly speaking the name of the Lord, that is not the only way it is done. We know that the power of our words are great, and the name of the Lord is greater still, so calling on the name of the Lord with ill intention or malace could also be classified as a violation of this statute. In the New Testament, it is writen that swearing is detramental to you and can invoke a curse on you. Not swearing as in saying a vulgar word or phrase (which is also frowned on), but swearing as in saying, " I swear mom, I didn't eat the cookies" while you dust the crumbs off your shirt. Many people do this every day. For example, a man loses his wife's wedding ring and has searched for it high and low, he finally says "God please, if you let me find this ring I will never lie to my wife ever again" while in his heart he already plans on just putting his wife's ring back where it belongs so he can act like it never happened. Now, others say that they come in the name of the Lord and yet their intentions are only to benefit from what they can gain from using his name, and thus, are doing so in vain. After this it still may be hard to see how He is protecting us from something with this law. I tell you, He protected you from cursing and shaming your self and your family. He has also removed you from the wrath that will come to those who lead others astray in His name. Be glad He has given us safe gaurds from all evil, if we just obey. *MERRY CHRISTMAS*

I am a jealous God...

2nd commandment...

"You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments."

This is a complex commandment, and not just because it is longer then the others. Idolatry--it's a word that most people don't understand. It's easy to look up it's meaning, but it's hard to understand the biblical definition of the word. "An idol? Do you mean like a statue to a god?" My anwser to that is yes--and no. Making an image or an idol is usually thought of as a statue, and for good reason, a statue that is being worshiped as a god is, in fact, an idol. "But people don't really make statues to worship anymore do they? That's so old fashioned!" Actually, yes they do, just not in the same way. There are still some people that make statues to worship, but the big thing now a days is worshiping the things we own. "I don't worship my car and my TV or anything like that, so I'm okay, right?" No you may not kneel and pray before them (unless a big game is on) however some people do treat their jobs or cars or phones like they are the most important things in their life. Family members, celebrities, spouses, these can all become idols to us if we are not careful. "Then how do you find grace in a commandment where God calls Himself jealous?" We can see it by looking at what we are really putting our faith in. I ask you, don't cars break down? Don't people lie, fall short, even pass away? Or we could go back to the statues, they are just stone, no more powerful than the rocks they are made from. Now ask your self, how bad does it hurt when a close family member betrays you? Doesn't loosing a job turn your life upside down? If the anwser to any of these is yes, then you should be able to see God's grace. He is not only trying to have us serve Him and Him only, He is trying to save us from the pain that comes from putting your trust in the things of this world that will ultimately let you down. Put your trust in Him and keep no idols in your heart. *MERRY CHRISTMAS*

You Shall Have No Other...

1st commandment

"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me."

Often times this list of rules is looked at as only a list of rules. They are rules, but there is more to it then just a set of things that are set in place to make your life harder. About a month ago, I received a revelation from the Holy Spirit. That revelation was about the grace that God shows us in all things. One of those things was about the Ten Commandments.

This is the first on the list and is considered the most important command that the Lord gives us. You may be wondering how there is grace in this rule, it is just about putting God first and it doesn't help me. God gives us this as our starting and finishing point in the law. If you follow this law you will be making God the most important thing in your life and by default you will obey the other laws. That is His grace. He made it so all we have to do is follow Him and we would be saved. If I stoped here my point will have been made. However I like details and I have 9 more days and 9 more commandments to go. So be sure to come back and read more tomorrow. *MERRY CHRISTMAS*

The Ten Days of Commandments

I was going to use the Christmas song (12 Day of Christmas) here, then I remembered my distain for that song and decided that was a bad idea. However the song is a good, kinda punny way of starting my new, ten days of blog posts. I will be making a new post every day from now until the day we wish our saviour a happy birthday. These ten posts will be covering none other then (drum roll) The Ten Commandments, and how you can find God's grace in them. They will be posted in order that they are writen in the Bible. Look for my first post later on today.  *MERRY CHRISTMAS*

*Editor's Note*
The editor of this post just so happens to thoroughly enjoy the above mentioned Christmas song... So enjoy!

Every Knee!

6 Although he was in the form of God and equal with God,
he did not take advantage of this equality.
7 Instead, he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant,
by becoming like other humans,
by having a human appearance.
8 He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
death on a cross.
9 This is why God has given him an exceptional honor—
the name honored above all other names—
10 so that at the name of Jesus everyone in heaven, on earth,
and in the world below will kneel
11 and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father.
Phil 2:6-11.


Does this mean that by everyone bowing and confessing that Jesus is Lord, that everyone will go to heaven? My former pastor had a saying. He said "Everyone will go to heaven one day. Not everyone will stay." That may still be confusing to some so I will break it down a little further. On the final day, be that day the day of our death or the final day of judgement, we will stand at the feet of the one true God. Being that God resides on the throne in heaven, we will arrive in heaven on that day. Therefore everyone will go to heaven. Sadly the second part of that saying is the truth. For those who did not except Christ as their savior, Jesus says that on the final day you will say "Lord Lord", and He will say "depart from me you doer of evil, I never knew you". He tells you to depart, not everyone will stay. Back to my first question. Will everyone go to heaven? Well the scripture above says that
everyone in heaven, on earth,
and in the world below will kneel
and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father. You may say, "I thought that confessing that Christ is Lord meant you excepted Him as your savior. That means everyone should go to heaven right?" Sorry to say, that's not true. Like I said before, Jesus told us what will happen when we are judged on our final day. We will either be excepted in to His kingdom or rejected forever, as if He never knew us. But, before that happens He says that we will say Lord Lord. Crying Lord Lord is confessing that He is, well, Lord. However, at this point it is to little to late. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, just not all will be in time to enter His kingdom. On this earth is where we need to confess that He is Lord, not everyone will do that while we are here and in turn there will be those that He does not know on that final day. Though this is painful, it is true.

Tuned out

Pictured Below: Impending Doom

"If its to loud you're to old" I've been familiar with this quote for years. It is not my quote, however, quotes like this (and I'm sure there are many others like it) are the reason I'm writing today. When I was younger, I was a fan of rap music. At first I wanted to listen to any kind of rap I could get my hands on. Eventually I no longer wanted to listen to just any rap, but only the kind that glorified God. Having only listened to this one genre of music for 3 or 4 years, I knew who a lot of the artists were, and what their message was.

Wednesday night youth group had become a regular part of my schedule, but this week was a little different and for some reason that I can't recall at the moment, my parents were not able to pick me up. A women from the church had been doing some work. She was not part of the youth's leadership, but we knew her well. She was the only person at the youth meeting that was able to give me a ride home so I went with her after service. As we were driving we started talking about youth and work, pretty much just making small talk. Then she said something that has stuck in my mind ever sense. First she asked the question, "What kind of music do you like?" I replied, "I like rap." Her response, with a wagging finger in my face, was, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CHRISTIAN RAPPER!" I must have forgotten that she was my only way home because I just looked at her and said "Where do you get your info from?" That wasn't the most respectful way of asking that question and in retrospect I should have phrased it better. That question lead to a surprised look and a small stammer from her, followed by a questioning statement... "Well name one then!" I named three. I then had a nice talk with her about the Christian rappers that I knew. She still seemed skeptical, so I brought a print out of a few artist and the lyrics of some of their songs when I came to church that Sunday. I told her that I didn't expect her to listen to the songs but that I would like her to reconsider the genre of music as a viable way for the Lord to get his message across and as a good way to worship.

Years later I found my self in a similar scenario, but the other way around. I was the one saying that a specific genre of music had no Christian artists. It happened in almost the exact same way the other incident did. After youth again and in the car on the way home. This time it was another church I was attending and I got a ride with a guy who at the time was a guest speaker at youth. He was a big "metal head." For those who aren't sure what that is, a metal head is simply a person who's favorite or perhaps only music choice is heavy metal music. On the way home, he put a song on that started out sounding fairly normal. Without warning, all of the sudden the song broke into a torrent of a fast double kick drum, a complicated guitar riff and what, at the time to me, sounded like the screaming voice of a demon straight from hell itself. I prayed that he would turn it down before we got to my house so my parents wouldn't yell about what we were listening to in the car. After I was dropped off, I felt strange about what I had just heard. It had made me go as far as to question whether this man was really a Christian. I mean how could he be, he listened to music like that?

The next week at youth I was watching as the youth group praise and worship team warmed up. They started practice with a jam session, and a very heavy jam session. Having heard that, I had to admit I liked it. During that week I looked up some music in that genre on the internet. I found my third love, Christian Death Metal, or as I like to call it "Christ's Death, Metal. I now listen to nearly nothing but this music. I love the passion and skill that these men and women have for their music and their God. They have taken a genre that has been considered by many (including me) to be satanic or pagan (with good reason) and have used it to facilitate bringing the light into a dark place. Metal, although that is a very broad term, has its share of bad Metal, or Black Metal. They often have evil messages about death, Satan, sex, drugs, you name it, they sing about it. As for Christian Metal, it sings praises about God's love, Christ sacrifice, and living a right life in God's eyes. In conclusion, my goal for this post is to bring some light to the subject about the idea that "only music sung by a choir can be of God." Not that hymns and choir music can't be good ways of worship, because they are a wonderful expression of our love for our God, yet their heavier counterparts are as well. I would urge all of you to look into any genre of music and look for God's hand in the words, compare the lyrics with scripture and come to your own conclusion.


For those of you interested in Christian Metal, I have a YouTube channel that my help you, God Bless.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ChristsDeathMetal?feature=mhee

Ghosts?

This is the usual idea of what a ghost looks like. I've seen real "GHOSTS" before (note my quotations). They don't look like this. This has been a topic in my life for years, but I do not believe in ghosts in the sense that most do. If I were to say "I saw a ghost in my house" most people would say it was a dead person in my house, haunting it. I've come to the conclusion that those people are wrong. Yes, I said wrong. The word ghost has long been used to describe the dead walking the earth : the soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined,usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons:

Man kind has always had a fear and or, fixation with ghosts and other unexplained mysteries. One of the only accounts of a so called, "ghost" in the Bible is when Saul (1st King of Israel) visited an exiled witch/fortune teller/medium. He asked her to contact the deceased Samuel for him. She obliged and brought him to Saul. This account has been debated in many ways. A lot of Christians say he wasn't really talking to Samuel, that the witch tricked him, or that it was a demon, and others that it was Samuel. I am one of the latter who believes this WAS Samuel. The Bible said it was him and that's all I have to go on, however, God also warned many times in the Bible not to talk to or try and contact the dead and I think there was a reason. By contacting the dead you disrupt what God has set in place. We are meant to live on this earth for a time and then die, we are not supposed come back to talk to those who are still on earth. Based on the fact that it was done at least once in history, I believe it may be possible people can still contact the dead, and that might be the only way they can come back. Now those are only my beliefs, they are not Biblical fact, although I do base this off of Biblical accounts. I do not believe it is possible for the dead to freely walk the earth as ghost. There is no Biblical evidence supporting the idea of ghosts as dead people haunting the living. So many might say "Well I've seen or heard or felt a ghost in my house" and I would say that I believe them. They have seen these things and heard these things. What I don't believe is the usual definition of the word ghost as I wrote above. The one we call the deceiver, or Lucifer, does just that, he deceives. If he can make you believe something that takes you away from the truth, he will. Like I said before, I've also seen a "GHOST." I was in my bed and I awoke to a soft but unfamiliar sound. My eyes opened to my dismay, I saw the second picture above. What your looking at is a peice of artwork I made, depicting the foot of my bed, a slightly open door, and a real event that took place. This ghostly figure came from right to left and stopped at the foot of my bed. Once it stopped it put what seemed to be an arm on my bed and I felt the bed shift as if someone had sat on the bed. I would love to tell more stories but that would make this already lengthy post even longer. To the point, I have dealt with this my whole life and my conclusion of what these things I have experienced are is nothing more then trickery by Satan himself. The reasoning would be to distract me from what the Lord has planed for my life. These are just demons, they can only do you harm if they are given the go ahead by you or God. If you want to know more or teach me something I may be missing on this topic you are more then welcome to comment.