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Forgive And Forget

By life, spirituality 10 Comments

Pastor Rick gave a profoundly impacting message at church this morning. It was all about forgiving those who have wronged you in the past and appologizing to those you’ve wronged yourself. I think everyone has both of these situations in their lives with at least one person, and I’m no exception. I generally don’t hold grudges against anyone, but there are one or two people who I need to apologize to for certain things. They’re actually mutual situations so I hope that by being the bigger person and reaching out to them to apologize, they might, too. But even if not, it will still make me feel better to right the wrong.

God forgives us for our sins by coming into a relationship with His son, Jesus Christ, and He commands us to do the same to others. He proclaims that there is nothing more essential in life than loving other people, and that’s essentially the basis of Christianity. That being said, I have a bit of work to do to make things right again in my life with a few people.

Powerful Lifehouse Drama About Life’s Temptations

By music, spirituality, videos 16 Comments

A friend of mine showed me this video clip yesterday and it was so incredibly powerful it brought me to tears. It literally sends chills down my spine. It’s amazingly impacting. Watch for yourself and see if it doesn’t do the same thing to you. It’s all about a girl’s struggle with so many things that took her away from the unwavering love of Jesus. She’s pushed down by so many negative influences, but in the end she realizes He is always there with open arms to take her back and make her new again. We’ve all done this and I have certainly done this myself, and it’s the most incredible feeling in the world to know that God is always there to catch you when you fall or go astray.

You can check out the video below. It’s done to the music of the Lifehouse song “Everything.” Please give it a watch. I promise it will be well worth your time.

 

 

What’s Bothering Me So Much That I’m Awake At 4:45 AM?

By life, spirituality One Comment

It’s 4:45 AM and I’m up writing because I just can’t sleep. Something’s bothering me and I can’t figure out what exactly. I know bits and pieces of it, but not the entire thing, hence my writing it out to try and get a handle on what it is. Part of it is the fact that I just feel like a hamster spinning on a wheel lately. Why? Because I have so many different projects running (web projects, personal projects, etc.) that I just can’t seem to get finished. I can start fifty of them but can’t ever finish one. Two examples I can think of at the moment are my Downtown Short Pump website and the Deep Run Marathon Dance DVD I need to have completed soon (that one will get done because I have a deadline, but I’m having a hard time getting around to it for various reasons).

The other reason I can’t sleep is I keep having these dreams lately that my life is completely stagnant and not going anywhere. I just woke up from one. Well, I suppose they aren’t exactly dreams, but rather subconscious feelings I have as I sleep because I still feel them for a while when they wake me up during the night. It’s hard to describe, but it’s this feeling that my life is two-dimensional and I’m just going through the motions, doing insignificant, meaningless things just because they’re part of a routine or something. It’s driving me insane at the moment trying to figure out the root of these feelings because they’re not an isolated chain of thoughts. I know the fact that I’m going absolutely nowhere isn’t completely true because I have some things going for me right now, but I have this nagging discontent that I just can’t seem to shake. I really need to figure it out.

One more thing is that everything in my life feels so fluid right now. Sometimes it feels like I’m on one of those moving sidewalks, like at the airport. I’m moving on down the line while everyone and everything else goes on by, or vice versa. Either way I feel out of place in my own life and the worst part is I can’t figure out what I need to do to change it.

It’s not like I’m necessarily searching for something of greater meaning in my life beyond the temporary thrills, because I have really focused on putting God at the center of my life more than ever in recent days. It really is true that by doing that, many of life’s problems seem to be less complex. At the same time, however, I don’t think I’m where I need to be.

There are also moments when I have these very satisfying feelings of thinking I’m just a few steps away from being where I need to be and being totally content in my life, but once again I don’t know what it is I need to do or change to get to that point. It goes much deeper in some ways, but as open and transparent as I am about my personal life, that’s as far as I think I can take it on my very public blog. There’s just only so much you can say without unintentionally offending certain people (and that could happen because sometimes you can’t judge someone’s tone by reading words on a screen as opposed to having a face-to-face conversation).

These are all things I’m going to pray about and ask God for guidance with in my life, as well as talk to other people about. I just thought that if I was awake and couldn’t sleep, it might help to write it all out. At the same time, though, if you’d like to offer up any suggestions via a comment, please do so as it would be much appreciated.

Celebrating Easter

By Uncategorized 10 Comments

It’s today that we celebrate that Christ, who died for all of our sins, rose again. Take the time today to remember and celebrate all He has done for all of us and in your own life personally. But it really is something to be joyful about. I know it’ll be a party at RCC this morning at the services (and when I say party, I mean that they really get into it, even more so today than usual, and it’s very impacting and powerful)! Happy Easter, everyone!

The True Meaning Of Christmas

By Uncategorized 11 Comments

With just a couple days left until Christmas, and the hecticness that brings, it’s important to remember the true meaning of Christmas: that God sent his one and only son to save us all from our sinful ways. In lieu of the Song Of The Week, watch this powerful video of a little boy named Logan calling into a Christian radio station who reminds us of the real reason for the season.

Christmas Song Of The Week: NewSong – “The Christmas Shoes”

By Uncategorized 16 Comments

I know, I know, this is a sad song for those of you that have heard it. But I had to post it. It’s a great story about a little boy who can’t afford to buy his mom a pair of shoes for Christmas so that she looks pretty when she gets to heaven to meet Jesus. It’s by Christian band NewSong, and it’s a great reminder of the true spirit of the Christmas season.

 

Christmas At RCC

By Uncategorized 12 Comments

This past week, Pastor Rick started his first message about the Christmas Season. The first message was all about giving. He talked about how much giving to God blesses you. One of his points was that you can’t outgive God. He’s talked about this in the past in other messages, and told numerous stories about how people who thought they didn’t have the money to give still gave, and how their lives were transformed and how God provided for them. I am without a job as of last Friday, but after hearing this message, I’ve decided I’m still going to tithe and give to the annual Christmas Offering next week because I’m faithful that God will help me to find another job soon.

What I’m Thankful For

By Uncategorized No Comments

Well it’s Turkey Day. I’m off to Home Team Grill in a couple hours to help serve Thanksgiving meals to the elderly and less fortunate with church, then to the family dinner at my cousins’ house. I just wanted to take a few moments to say what I’m thankful for.

First and foremost, I give the utmost thanks to God for all he’s done in my life in the past year. He has blessed me with so much, taken care of all my needs, and helped me change myself for the better in many ways. He has also provided a way for me to use my talents and skills to help others reach Him through my church with the Impact Arts multimedia ministry. Through the church, I’ve also made some great friends such as Anthony and Tori.

I’m also really thankful for my family. People may come and go, but they’re the one constant that’s always there no matter what. I love them very much.

I’m very thankful for my best friend, Jen. She’s always there to talk to about anything, always keeps me entertained with her crazy stories, and is just an overall wonderful person to be around. Sometimes when nothing’s gone right all day I’ll hang out with her, if only for a few minutes, and my whole day is turned around. She has a way of doing that, and I love her a lot.

There are also so many other things I’m thankful for, but these are the top ones. I hope you’ll take some time today to really reflect and thank God for his blessings in your life. Enjoy your time with family and friends, and eat lots of good food!

P.S. – I’m thankful for all my faithful blog readers, too! 

Influence That Impacts

By Uncategorized 13 Comments

Yesterday was Friend Day at Richmond Community Church. Pastor Rick started a new series, “Influence That Impacts.” He had some interesting insights into how we are influenced by other people and how we influence them, as well. I took some notes during the sermon. Here are a few great points he made:

  1.  “We become aware of what others’ influence makes us feel like, not how we make other people we influence feel.” This is so true. We all talk about how others make us feel, but we don’t often think about how what we do makes others feel.
  2. “It’s not where people are in their lives, it’s what they think they aren’t that holds them back.” Many people are held back by fear, especially fear of failure. Moreover, a lot of people think they can’t positively influence someone else’s life because of what they think they’re lacking or because of a shortcoming. I’ve experienced this before. We all have our downfalls, but we can still have a good influence on other people.
  3. “Your influence is determined by the choices you make.” If you’re going to have a positive influence on someone’s life, you need to make smart choices and set a good example.
  4. “There are three types of people, generally speaking- Well Poisoners (those who discourage others from reaching their goals), Lawn Mowers (absorbed in themselves), and Life Enhancers (positively influence others).” This pretty much summarizes people’s personalities if you think about it. People are either going to bring you down or uplift you, or just not care at all and tend solely to their own self-advancement.

This is going to be a great message series, full of insights about how to reach, connect with, and influence others in your life.

Award-Winning Video Production

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I’ve been so excited about this and I’m so glad that I can finally share this information with everyone. Pastor Joey submitted a video drama we produced this summer, “Daily Inventory,” to the Church Production Magazine Video Production Awards Competition. Turns out we won Best Drama in the country in the category of churches with 600-2,000 attendees! Tori and myself worked many hours editing this production. Congratulations to everyone else on our team that put so much hard work into this video! Click here to see all the credits. The other winners can be found on the magazine’s Awards page. The video will be shown at the Worship Facilities Expo this week in Atlanta, Georgia.

It brings me so much joy to be a part of such a wonderful group of people and it’s even more awesome to be able to see just how many individual lives are changed as a result of the church’s Impact Arts multimedia ministry. Best of all, I’m working for Jesus and growing the Kingdom of God. What could be more satisfying than that? Great job everyone! Click below to play the video:

“Daily Inventory”