12-Hour Fasting

Fasting. Right away the word makes me hungry. And it's making me hungry now. I am currently 32 minutes away from finishing my first ever 12-Hour fasting period. My reasons (there were several):

1. To show God that I love Him enough to give up food for (almost) a whole day.

2. To remember to pray, about various things; Myself, friends, family, the lost.

3. To remind me of my battle with sin and temptation. Because my heart was so set on finishing the 12-hours, temptations arose for me to break that covenant. By saying "No, I love God more" to those almost unbearable temptations, it has encouraged me in my battle with sin.

and the most important
3. To remind myself of the suffering that Jesus Christ went through in His last hours. Every time I would feel hungry, I would remember this and remind myself that this painful hunger that I feel... Imagine it magnified by billions of times. But even that would not stand up to the horror of Christs torture and more so God's Wrath poured out on Him.

It's been an interesting experience. Definitely not the funnest day of my life, being limited to simply drinking water. Because of the lack of food I have become the victim of a rather terrible headache, but I'm hoping the cure will lie within the food that I shalt be consuming at 12:00AM EST. There were several times when I almost "failed" and gave in to the temptation of food. But thankfully I remained strong.

It was hard! It was very hard. But I am glad I did it. I do have to admit my wimpy-ness; I was originally going to make this a weekly thing, but after this hard experience I think I may make it monthly instead. Perhaps the last day of every month or something like that.

Now 19 minutes away from 12AM, I am looking hungrily up at the foil-wrapped cheese steak sandwich and curly fries that are waiting for me. It's funny, because even in that I am reminded of Christ. Perhaps during His last hours He felt something similar; Knowing that at the other end of the suffering, His primary mission to save His children (well, those who repent and believe) would be complete. And perhaps there were times when He would think of this thought, and He would smile in excitement.

My True Calling?

I may have found my true calling... But before that, I think I've come to the realization that I've been wasting tons of money for the last couple of years on barbershop-haircuts.

Seriously, though, my hair is like... like Harry Potter's hair (at least as I remember it being "depicted" in the books). I will go to get it cut short and in less than a week and a half to two weeks I will be back to having mop-head. And it's only gotten worse because of how the economy is now, prices are going up. I remember when haircuts used to be $8.00 at the barbershop near me. In less than three years, the price almost doubled at $14.00. Now, of course that's better than what most barbershops charge nowadays, but still, it adds up. You can imagine how much money I lost over my dang hair.

Anyways, so I was just getting tired of both the money AND my hair, so I thought What the heck? I'm gonna cut my own hair. We still had an electric razor from the old days when my mom or oldest sister would cut my hair. So I dug it out--Ooh! But first, rather than walking into it blindly, I actually googled "How to cut your own hair". From there I actually found a couple helpful tips, plus a video of a guy cutting his own hair. So after reading and watching how to cut your own hair, I went into the bathroom, dug out the razor, got out the hair-clippers, and went to work.

30 minutes later... It was done! And I have to say that I am really happy with it. It looks virtually the same as when the barber does it. I ran into a couple of problems that had some small consequences, however. The "biggest" one being that I didn't have a handheld mirror so I had to sort of "go by the touch" with the back of my head. I got a little vigorous... or... rigorous.... whichever word it is--and way overshaved two areas on either side. BUT I was able to sort of mask it by doing some touch-up shaving with my regular, face-shaving razor. The mistake is somewhat noticeable, but it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been for a first time. So... It feels great to have found a money sa--okay that's just nasty... my dog just... let one fly... and it was one of those soft-whispery pooooof ones... those are usually the deadliest---anyhoo! It's nice to have found a money-saving thing to do. This, by the way, is the result (it looks like the bottoms of my eyelids are red and my eyes themselves are pink, but this is not so, it's just weird lighting):


So, not to bad, eh?

Last Night's Nightmare... "Pet Cemetery" Much?

Last night I had probably one of the most disturbing nightmares I have ever had in my entire life... so far. It has pretty much been bothering me all day to the point where I couldn't eat several times today because I just kept thinking about how disturbing it was. And I feel bad because it drags a friend of mine into it as well as someone very close to him.

Basically the dream centered around a friend of mine who lost his wife recently to cancer--right away we can thank God that she was a Follower of Christ. Basically what happened is that he somehow found a device or something, I'm not quite sure what it was exactly, but whatever it was, when he attached it to the body of his wife who passed away, her body was re-animated. It acted like her, it talked like her, it was practically her... except that somewhere deep down inside I knew it wasn't quite her. And it was disturbing. It felt very much like what I would assume it would feel like if some how in real life a dead body was re-animated. A body with no soul. So that, in itself, was disturbing. But then it got worse.

She began to decay as the day went on. All I can say was, it was awful. And she kept wanting to hug me, too. Eventually it got to the point where I just kept avoiding her... it... altogether. Even now it's giving me shivers.

So that's basically it. Now, I haven't seen Pet Cemetery, but from what I know about it... that sounds pretty dang close. You'd think I watched the movie the night before or something, but I can assure you I did not. I didn't even think about the dang movie!

So, there's my nightmare. Take it. Have it. Please! I mean it! I don't want to think about it any longer. (She's probably looking down at me right now laughing, if... people in Heaven even do that. That could be another of those heresies we're so good at coming up with).

All I know is that I would like to scrub my brain with a wire brush so that I can get this puking nightmare out of my head.

WHAT ARE WE DOING!!!?

So many of you have probably experienced something similar to what I'm about to share; For a long while, something is going on in the background that you just do not like. It makes you annoyed to think about it. Yet for the most part you are able to just ignore it and go on living. Then suddenly it strikes. Like some little kid screaming on a bus that you've been enduring for most of the trip, but suddenly, it all boils up inside of you and you find you cannot hold it in any longer. Like a volcano erupting and spewing fiery waves of lava and burning rock, you explode. Your endurance has run out. Readers, I can say this is exactly what has happened to me today. My endurance has run out over the issue of the True Gospel. My patience has run out with the Four Spiritual Laws and the Five Things God Wants You To Know. My aggravation over Rick Warren's sugar-coated Gospel, and the Emerging Church's "doctrine" of "We need a new Gospel" has erupted.

It makes me so sick looking at how the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been so degraded to the point where "Christ is a Happy Pill that you can take to improve your life." It makes me sick! It makes me want to puke!

Both Joel Osteen and the Emerging Church claim we need a Gospel for the modern day that is acceptable to the younger generation and acceptable to those of other denominations and acceptable to those of other Religions. Rick Warren claims we need to give people the "Happy Pill" and treat Sin passively because it is too offensive.

I ask you this, Joel Osteen, members of the Emerging Church, and Rick Warren: What right do you have to take the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, and manipulate it and mangle it to your own design, desire, and will? What gives you the right to tell Christ that His Gospel is no longer acceptable and that we need a new one that is not offensive.

It is people like you who are compiling the greatest heresy in the history of heresies. It is because of your heretical, extrabiblical designs that False Converts are sprouting up faster than Raindrop-followers at the beginning of Spring.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not meant to be acceptable, because it is unacceptable to mankind. As Paul Washer once said: the Gospel is a scandal because it goes against everything mankind believes in. We cannot sugar-coat it and make it out to be a blue-skies-sunny-day decision. Jesus Christ made it perfectly clear that only when mankind admits that it is evil and in need of a Savior, will Jesus be able to save us. If we were truly "good people", we wouldn't need a Savior. The Cross would be meaningless to us! And as Followers of Christ it is our job to follow that scandal. Not be like the world and hand it sugar-coated, bite-sized pieces.

STOP!!! Stop what your are doing!! The Bible makes it clear that God abhores those who lead their brothers astray. And this, sirs, is exactly what your are doing when you create false converts! STOP IT!

We cannot dipsy-doodle around Sin as if it is just a sidenote! It is serious! Before we recognize Christ as our Savior we MUST recognize our Sin! Without our confrontation with Sin the Cross is meaningless! When we come before Christ our focus must be on our Sin. And then once we have recognized that Christ Jesus is our Lord and Savior and that He took our Sin and it was killed along with Him on the Cross, then the focus falls on Christ.

STOP YOUR HERESIES!! LITERALLY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, HIS CHILDREN, AND THE LOST!

Websitedesignoplocination

I just redesigned my website (www.starwarsfanworks.com/lionsmouth) and I thought I really liked what I had come up with.... Until I saw zeldauniverse.net. Suddenly my newly designed and more visitor friendly website looks like a graveyard. So I'm already trying to think of new ways to improve the site and make it better looking and more eye-catching. Really, my options are limitless, thanks to the pretty much do-whatever-the-heck-you-want design tools of Web Easy Pro 7--though it does have some downsides--and with that in mind I feel like I'm still not taking full advantage of my website and what it could look like.

I'd love to have like Flash stuff. Like an animated banner and such.... Hmmm... Learning how to create Flash thingies may have to be my next... thingy (I can't think of the word I want to use).

I Have Been Converted!

Well, see, I was on LiveJournal... But now I'm here. I don't know, LiveJournal just seems too dark, gloomy, and secluded for my taste. Where as Blogspot is happy and cheerful with birds singing and wind blowing through the tall grass on a warm spring evening. (Remember, Blogger.com... $2 bucks... send it to me. Now).

So, don't really have anything to talk about just yet because I must be off to have some lunchies and do some WORK. Blech! Heck, da munnies is grood, though. So I'll take it.


Aim high for Justice!