I Refuse

This is a really powerful song that really applies to the message on my previous post.

I just wanted to share this song, it's really touching and a call to action for all of us.

My God's Not Dead, He's Surely Alive

While I was driving home tonight, this song came on the Fish.

Like any song that is meant to speak to us, one line stood out to me more than any other. I know this song. I know most of the lyrics, and I sing along every time. I actually quite like the song. This line has never meant anything, nor am I sure that I knew this line before tonight, but when I heard it, it struck a cord.


"Let hope arise and make the darkness hide. My faith is dead, I need a resurrection somehow. Now I'm lost in Your freedom and this world I'll overcome"

"My faith is dead, I need a resurrection somehow"

"My faith is dead."

Cord struck. Ouch.


How easy it is to get wrapped up in the everyday trappings of this life. Wake up, get ready, go to school, go to work, do some homework, go to sleep, then wake up to do it all over again. Then comes that time when you wake up late one morning and forget to say morning prayer because you're in a panicked rush, and before you know it, morning prayer is no longer a part of your morning ritual. Then you have a super long day and you can't wait to lie down in bed and knock out. You're just SO tired that you think your bedtime prayer can wait until morning, after all, God will understand that you're too tired. Even the Apostles fell asleep on Christ, right? Then before you know it, you stop praying before going to sleep.

These little things keep on building up and building up until you end up forgetting how to pray completely. And it's hard to sit in church and focus without prayer. All of a sudden, Mass loses all the meaning it had to you before and you start drifting off, thinking about other things, completely irrelevant things, maybe even sinful things, when you should be focusing 100% on the Eucharist before you. Mass without its meaning becomes unimportant and suddenly you start finding reasons why not to go to church, and when you do... You become a prime example for going through the motions.

And without prayer and Mass, sin becomes so easy, and sometimes it even seems harmless. Once you lose prayer and church and that fire that kept you going for so long, sin is there waiting to take over your life and show you the path straight to Hell. Where there was once a burning passion for my God, there is now a shadow created by the darkness of my sin.


How on earth did I fall this far?


When you fall, you don't notice until you're too deep in to just brush off your scraped knees. You're so deep in that you end up having to claw and fight your way out of the quicksand that the Devil has so cleverly got you trapped in. And the worst part is, when I realized that I fell, I was too exhausted from the fall to try to get back up. Sure I've prayed every blue moon to God to bring me back to Him and to pick me up and reignite my fire, but I didn't do anything about it. I've been sitting here, wallowing in my self-pity that I'm in the dark, asking God to pull me out of it, but I haven't done a single darned thing about it. Asking God to help me is all great and dandy, and it's exactly what we're supposed to do, but how can we expect for Him to guide us towards the light, when our backs are to Him? How did I ever expect Him to fix anything, when I was barely trying to get out and actively working on digging myself a deeper hole?

But the good news is that I have absolutely zero doubt that once I turn around and start actively trying to get out of this pit I'm in, God will be right there to pull me out, brush me off, and bring me back to His Path. And there's no better time for me to start the fight than now. It's during these forty days of Lent that we are all supposed to be growing closer to Christ as we get closer to His Resurrection.


Today's Mass Psalm reading even kind of ties in with it.
Psalm 34:5-7 I sought the Lord, who answered me, delivered me from all my fears. Look to God that you may be radiant with joy and your faces may not blush for shame. In my misfortune I called, the Lord heard and saved me from all distress.
Psalm 34:19 The Lord is close to the broken-hearted, and saves those whose spirit is crushed

In my misfortune I am calling, and I have faith and trust in the Lord, that He will hear me and save me from this distress. All the parts of my life that I now find lacking, I know will all fall back together again, in an enriching and fulfilling way as I turn towards God. No more will I have my back turned against Him, because I want, I desperately want and need that radiant joy that comes from knowing Him and walking in His paths. It's deliverance time. I'm ready to repent, and turn myself over to God once again, to be saved and loved. No more shall I be broken-hearted and crushed, because I'm turning myself over for a true spiritual makeover.

And I'm changing the empty prayer I've been saying for so long now... I am no longer praying to have the faith life I once had again; I'm praying to have an even better and stronger faith life.


So come shake the ground with the sound of revival, because I'm ready to be on fire for God again and overcome this world!

Meditating on Scripture?

They say that reading Scripture without meditating on it is like swallowing food without chewing first. However, I am quite terrible at this meditating bit that people so often talk about, so I'm trying something new. I am going to write about the message that the Bible verses are speaking to me, as well as whatever background whatever I use to 'meditate'. Hey, everyone's faith journey is different right?

So here it goes...

Today (or yesterday, depending on how you count your days.. I count a day over when I go to sleep, so February 19 1AM is still the 18th to me) I decided to read the daily Mass readings that pulled from this lovely website. The readings were:

Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18
Psalm 19:8-10, 15
Matthew 25:31-46

And of course I ended up reading Leviticus 19:3-10 and Psalm 19:11-14 too. So some of the verses I'm reflecting on are included in there too. I'm just going to put the verses that stood out to me and what I thought about them.


The first verse was right at the beginning: Leviticus 19:3 "Revere your mother and father, and keep My Sabbaths. I, the Lord, am your God"

This one stood out to me because throughout this chapter, all of the Ten Commandments are mentioned at some point or the other, but these two came first. Also, I think that whenever certain points of the Bible that I am familiar with come up again in other parts, it just pops out to me, kind of like a friendly face in a crowd of strangers. Also, I had a little bit of Catholic guilt in there, because I've been bad about making it to Mass every Sunday over the past couple of months. I think I've probably missed as many as I've gone to and I feel pretty bad about it ): I think I'm back in the groove though; I'm working on it at least/

Verse number two was: Leviticus 19:16 "You shall not go about spreading slander among your kinsmen; nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor's life is at stake. I am the Lord"

The first part didn't really strike out to me, it was the second. "Nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor's life is at stake." I interpreted this in both the literal and the figurative state. Earlier today I was doing some stuff and looking a pro-life things, even had a conversation about it with a pro-choice person. Reading this verse really just brought all that back. I can't stand idly when my neighbor's life is at stake. And who is my neighbor? My roommate is. So is the kid down the hall or down the street. So is someone in a neighboring county, city, or state. So are people in Mexico and Canada and Brasil and even Europe and Asia and Africa. Everyone is my neighbor as far as Christ is concerned, because everyone is my brother or sister in Him, even the figurative "Samaritans" that aren't considered to be like me or even have the same beliefs. But that's a really cutesie thing to say, until you realize that the unborn child is also your neighbor. "Nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor's life is at stake." I can't stand by idly while children are being mass murdered every day, by their own parents.

The second way was a lot less drastic. But still, how much does it cost you to help someone else? Make their life a little better? My neighbor is the homeless man who sits at the intersection holding up a sign, and I can't stand by idly while his life is at stake, even if all I can do for him is give him a Chick-fil-A coupon or a dollar. My neighbor is the single mom with 5 kids whom she's struggling to feed. How can I stand by idly while there's legislation popping up to reduce financial aid for these families and take away her children's only means to healthcare, when I'm 18 and able to vote for someone who will help her? That weird kid in class is also my neighbor, and how can I stand by idly when his life is at stake with people making fun of him?

That's just a glimpse into all the thoughts bouncing around in my head about this verse.


Which ties right in with the next verse: Leviticus 19:18 Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's the pinnacle of the Christian faith. It ties right in with everything I said above, but it also surprised me. When I think about God in the Old Testament, I think of a strict Dad with lots of rules and full of fire and brimstone. He's the strict Daddy teaching His kids how to live their lives right, and once we enter the New Testament, He's still the same strict Daddy with the same rules, but now He also shows His loving and compassionate side. But here it is, the number one theme of the New Testament sitting in the third Book of the Old Testament. I didn't even know that was part of OT Doctrine, and I consider myself well-versed in Scripture. I guess it's true when they say you learn something new everyday.

Take no revenge and cherish no grudge. Again with the kindness and compassion. What happened to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Well, that make the whole world blind and in need of dentures. I think it just goes to show that there is no two Gods, or two different view of God from OT to NT. It's the same God with the same teachings all throughout, it's just us that don't pay attention to all the details, only the ones we want to. God had been teaching these things long before He sent Jesus down to drill it into our heads.

I am the Lord. This phrase is repeated tons of times throughout this chapter and I'm not sure why. Just some food for thought for later...


Those are my thoughts on the first reading for today (the 18th). Maybe I'll do the other two readings tomorrow, or I'll just skip over to tomorrow's readings, but now... It's 2am and I have an 8am class tomorrow.




Good night and God bless

The Beginning Of A New Era

So I feel like it's only right that I mention somehow that the world was supposed to end today, and last October, and last May, and in 2008, and in 2006, and in 2004, and in 2000, and in 1999, and in 1994, and so on. People are always full of apocalypse theories, and somehow, tons of people fall into the End Of The World mindset every time. Sad. Although I'm not going to lie, it was brutally windy last night.

Anyways, as the world is ending, I'm sitting in my dorm, on and off cleaning while blogging, pinning, tumbling, tweeting, and Facebooking. I need a life! Although I can't complain, today is my day off from work and I had a great time celebrating my best friend's, Carlin, birthday all the way up til 4am last night/this morning. We had a ton of fun XD

But on a more serious note, it does feel like the world just might be close to it. So many horrible things happening every day all over the world, and it's heart breaking. I still cry every time I think about Sandy Hook. I can't imagine what was going through the mind of that man to slaughter 20 little babies in cold blood. You have to be sick to do that kind of thing. And to make matters worse, those stupid Westboro people are planning on picketing those poor children's funerals.
They're already disgusting and do terrible things, but little kids??? Really??? You have to further worsen an already unbelievable tragedy by picketing poor, innocent babies' funerals. I refuse to acknowledge them as Christians, because their actions are absolutely NOT condoned by the Church or the Bible's teachings.
I'm usually much more loving, but this is the end of the line. Finding love in my heart for people willing to do this is much too difficult for me. I'm more upset by them than the shooter, at least he had the excuse of mental illness. Sigh... I hope they receive the official classification of what they are soon, a hate group, so they can be banned from picketing innocent people's funerals soon.

Yet, maybe some good might still come from Sandy Hook. I don't know, but since the tragic shooting I've seen so many posts from famous and influential people about bringing God back. It's true though, every time tragedies occur, we automatically blame God. How He could let these things happen??? But we try so hard to keep Him out of our schools and governments, that can we really blame Him? My two favorites so far have been Ben Stein's and Huckabee's from Fox News account of things. Even though Stein's isn't directly about Sandy Hook (it's about the White House calling their Christmas trees 'holiday' trees), it's still a beautiful message and it relates directly to what's been going on with everyone's post-Sandy Hook questions. Then Huckabee's video is also incredible. I love it. He puts it out just like it is and I think it's an amazing message. Both of them say the same things: That we've spent so much time and effort trying to get rid of God's influence in schools, governments, and lives, that we have no right to ask where God has gone during our tragedies. Yet, while the tragedies are happening, God is still there taking care of us when we need Him, even though as soon as we've recuperated, we'll turn our backs on Him again.

Here are the links to what I'm talking about:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151195531403915

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4174330156740&set=a.2125237610707.2104648.1238881931&type=1&relevant_count=1

Both of them are very wise men, and people are listening, I hope. These aren't the only ones of the like that I've seen, they're just my two favorites. Who knows? Maybe changes are coming, maybe there really will be an improvement of things. If more people start thinking like this more, maybe there just might be a betterment of things. I pray and hope and wish that people will listen, that people will improve, that our government and our nation and this world will improve.

And maybe that's just my wishful thinking. But God knows, and He won't let us fall without giving us a safety net to catch us.

God bless America, cause He knows we need His blessing now more than ever. And watch over your new little saints in Heaven.