le_meme_chose's Revelife

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:42:55 GMT

i was watching a talk show and the topic was a website that allows and provides people to have affairs. i'm really truly disgusted by it. i had to turn it off because i was so repulsed by what our society has come to. if you've read my posts, you'll know that i despise cheating in any shape, way, or form. a guest on the show claimed to have slept with over 150 men in a 6 month time span. she began using this site when she and her husband, after having a child, quit sleeping together. all that she was saying in its purest form was, "Me, me, me. What I want, what I need, everything is about me." everything she said was about her and how she was dissatisfied because the attention wasn't on her after she had her child. she said she felt that the website allowed her to feel liberated. i wonder, though, if she even took the time to think about her husband and how he could possibly have been going through something to get to that point in his marriage.

anyway, this website allows people like them to find others who are looking for extramarital affairs as well. the creator of the website was on this talk show and stated that the website does not condone adultery; that if someone is coming to the website, he/she has already decided to cheat and his website was just a means to do so.

how could the creator of the website not feel at fault in some way for aiding in the dissolution of marriages across the country?

we need to wake up and hear God's call: marriage is not a means to gratify our wants and needs. it was not created to satisfy ourselves, to feel loved, to feel close with someone. God has already provided that everlasting loving relationship with us. marriage is a promise to us that God will never leave or forsake us.

i can only hope and pray that we wake up as a nation and realize that marriage is more precious than what we've turned it into.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:31:08 GMT

in my previous entry, i wrote at the very end about worship.

it seems that every other day i am looking to God and asking Him (or maybe demanding?) Him to reveal His plan and purpose for me. i beg God to answer my questions, to speak to me, to carry me through every day. however, what i don't realize is that if i were to hear God speak, i wouldn't even survive to thank Him. like i said in my earlier post, we stand and we worship God and praise Him for all He does. we ask God to open our eyes and our hearts when we worship so that we can breathe Him in.

however-
i've had those moments when i'm singing and praising the good Lord and all of a sudden, He whispers my name and i fall to my knees. i'm not even able to stand before Him when He whispers! many times i've worshipped and started bawling because i'm overcome by His presence and yet here i am, every other day, requesting for answers to my life's petty questions. it's funny in a way because we humans have these egos that demand things from our God who is so great. then when we get just a tiny whisper, sometimes not even that, but a breath of God and we fall to our knees. i think God knows how desperately we need Him so He gives us those moments to humble ourselves before Him and to realize that HE IS GOD.

...and it's beyond amazing that He does this. i'm also pretty sure that God does these things to remind us that He has the power to bring us to our knees and He has the power to carry us through our darkest moments. even when we demand answers from Him, He patiently waits for us to return to Him with our hearts.

we think we know what's best for us, but in those times of worship when we are truly worshipping on our knees, we know that it doesn't matter what the answer is, as long as God is the one carrying us through.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:35:07 GMT

i've been thinking about marriage a lot lately. yes, this is one of those posts about marriage. why do people write so much about marriage and relationships? because it has so much to do with and everything to do with God's love for us.

my dear love and i have been talking about getting married. last night into the wee hours, we talked about our purpose together before God. we know that we're now ready to get married, not because we want to spend the rest of our lives together, but because God has prepared us as single people and the next step in God's plan for us is to use our gifts together to glorify Him. that is why the gift of singleness is so great. God prepares us and grows us to one day fit with another person to serve God together.

i strongly feel that God's purpose for marriage is to serve Him and not ourselves. on top of that, marriage is an example of God's covenant with the church - to never leave or forsake us. that is why i've decided that divorce will never be an option for us. getting a divorce is the equivalent of saying that God will one day leave us because he no longer loved us or wanted to be with us. God's covenant is forever with the church and when He made that promise, it was forever. "let no man break apart what God has put together." that's what they say at the wedding isn't it? why do we feel that we have a right to break apart what God has created? our society has so watered down God's covenant to us, marriage, that divorce is okay and we feel that we have a right to break it apart.

that is why i also believe that same sex marriage is not right under the eyes of God. the law in America may one day say something different, but under God, same sex marriage will never be justified. God didn't make a covenant with Himself; the Church does not make a covenant with itself. God and the Church go together like a man and a woman go together. same sex marriage would make a mockery of God's everlasting promise to the church. yes, God created love and it's great that we choose to love one another, but to say that same sex marriage is right would mean that God's covenant is irrelevant.

it's too often that we get married simply because we want to and it makes us happy. we don't realize that marriage means so much more than what we think it does. God calls us to get married because we are to serve Him with one heart when we are married. He's prepared this for us in advance. Jesus didn't suffer and die on the cross so that we could later divorce Him and break the promise. i know that there are Christians who have divorced and God doesn't condemn them. He still loves them and knows that they have broken hearts and wants them desperately... to rediscover that His promise is still for them and still stands strong.

God's love is no joke and it's more powerful than we could ever know. when we stand and worship God, there are sometimes moments when God whispers to us and we fall to our knees because we are in the presence of God. even when we think we should stand and worship Him, ultimately we are on our knees before Him. if a whisper from God can bring us to our knees, how much more can His love do to us? it picks us up and raises us from the dead and keeps our hearts beating for Him.

God's love is magnificent and He loves us through all our denials and rejections. He is good and sufficient.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:47:58 GMT

i registered to vote today.
it seems fitting for me to write about politics and the election.

back when john kerry was running against george w for the presidency, i had my mind set on voting for john kerry. i remember getting together at my youth pastor's house with a bunch of the girls from my youth group. we were in a heated discussion about the elections and i remember that i was the only one voting democrat. suddenly the attention was on me and it became this back and forth fire between the pastor (and his wife) vs me.

it wasn't so much of a fire back and forth but more of a yelling at me for not voting for george w because he was a born again Christian. i was explaining why i felt that kerry was the better candidate and all i kept getting back from them was, "are you a Christian? do you believe in abortion?" and of course, i answered in the affirmative in regards to my salvation. the whole abortion thing was a whole different story. i don't think abortion is right, but i would not condemn a woman for getting an abortion because i don't know the shoes she walks in or her state of mind when she goes in for an abortion. only we know why we sin the way we do and because i couldn't give them an affirmative response to the abortion question, everyone immediately thought i wasn't saved or something of the sort.

so this argument goes back and forth and everyone is asking me why i wanted to vote for kerry. i explained my perspectives based on his stance on different issues in comparison to george w's positions on things. (have to vote for the one who i had the most in common with, not who i completely agreed with.)

anyway, to make a long story short, i felt like that incident was really unnecessary and wrong. i was maybe only 19 at the time and in the first years of college. i loved my church, but at that moment i felt like an outsider because of who i had decided to vote for. it was so unfair and i felt like they were treating me like a leper for not voting for george w. it was wrong on so many levels and i couldn't understand why we couldn't just agree to disagree. i'd never challenge anyone's salvation based on who they were voting for. why would we, as Christians, cast each other out like that? although they never apologized, i forgave them for doing that. it made me realize that when we get too caught up in things of this world, even important things like presidential elections, can come in between fellow believers and we need to remember that we are not of this world.

no matter who wins this year's election, i'm praying that God will still work through him to change this country.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:50:58 GMT

i've always thought dealing with death was a difficult thing to do. my cousin's dad passed away this morning after being in a wreck with a semi. we have a pretty big family and our parents were good friends throughout the years. i think the thought of her father passing away hurts because i think of my own father and i'm not quite sure how i would deal with everything.

what's strange is that i automatically thought about all the legal issues that would surround this tragedy. on top of the family dealing with his sudden death, they'll have to deal with the insurance company, his will, his job, and everything else. we're learning to be objective in the way we look at situations from a legal standpoint, but for some reason today, it really bothered and hurt me to hear about his passing. it's like you know that his death will create ripple effects and even if the family goes into a lawsuit w/ the other driver, there's no guarantee of damages being awarded to the family.

i don't know... i'm not sure how to express how i'm feeling and i'm not even sure if i'm making any sense.

life is difficult and i don't understand why we have to go through these things. it's hard to keep an objective perspective on the situation from a legal standpoint because doing so would make you feel detached from the situation. i'm not a cold person, but i know that this is going to be difficult for the family and i wish i could tell them something that would make things easier...

i don't really understand why God allows us to feel the kind of pain that we feel in losing someone close to us. ultimately though, i know God has a greater plan and i am waiting anxiously until He reveals it all to us.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:11:29 GMT

every once in a while i'll come across Christians who flaunt their faith... and not in a good way. of course, i am not one who should judge others and this is just how it makes me feel. (i may be wrong about the whole thing.) however, i know Christians who are constantly talking about God and how their faith is and how great the things that they do are and how their actions so greatly affect others. really, it kind of just bothers me sometimes and it turns out that what they're doing not a blessing to me (perhaps others.)

am i wrong for feeling this way?

i've met Christians who genuinely have a heart for Jesus and you can see God's love overflowing from them without them talking about all their accomplishments. it's the ones who are always talking about the things that they've done that bothers me. i feel as though it's not about all the works that we've done, but whether or not we truly believe and live out our lives the way God calls us to. we can do as much as we think is necessary, but when we start boasting about it, that kind of stuff starts to bother me.

i suppose this is a sign from God that i need to pray for my heart, to not be so hardened towards those Christians who do that kind of thing.

Monday, October 06, 2008

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:43:20 GMT

this weekend i attended a Christian conference for college students. God spoke to me in so many ways! praise and worship was great... i felt alive worshipping God. i'd like to share a few points that stuck out to me:

"God is your savior but is He Lord of your life?"
such a simple and true statement that makes you take a moment to reflect and acknoweldge the truth of the phrase. it's so often that we accept Jesus to rule over our life in some areas and in the rest of our lives we tell God that these areas belong to us and we'll make the decisions. it's wrong for us to do this because with God, it's all or nothing. God doesn't pick and choose parts of us to love and we can't expect for God to be okay with being Lord over only half of us.

praising God is a wonderful and amazing thing. i cried, i laughed, i was tired, i was fulfilled and satisfied. i love genuine worship. i love when i genuinely worship because i am completely eneveloped in God's love and it seems that nothing else in the world matters when i am in His presence.

God guides us with miracles everyday. even when we feel as though we have no direction or have lost all contact with God, He answers us and reveals to us His purpose for us in furthering His kingdom.

accountability.
i got to catch up with a close friend of mine who i haven't really gotten to talk to in a while. we talked about how our lives were going and what we were struggling with. i knew exactly where she was coming from and i knew how much it sucked to be in that place where you feel you can't hear God speak anymore. i think that is one of the scariest things i've ever encountered, not hearing God and not know what happened. we both realized that we needed to be better friends who encouraged each other through everything and to really love our friends in Christ.

we all need Jesus, regardless of whether or not we think we do. a true and genuine relationship with Christ is the only way that we'll ever survive this world. so many people are lonely and don't know that there is a God who wants a close relationship with them and won't reject them even when things get tough. we may run from God but God never leaves us.

day by day - the only way to live is day by day with God walking us through each day. regardless of what happened yesterday or tomorrow, God is here today and will be with us to the end of time.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:17:14 GMT

if you saw a baby on a railroad track and a train coming in the distance on the same track, would you save the baby?
what if the baby instead was a death row inmate - would you still save the "baby"?
how much would you sacrifice to help another person? would you risk an arm, a leg, or possibly your life?

i've been learning about negligence and duty of care in one of my classes and the issue of the baby on the track came up as an example of duty of care. in our society today, we are so apprehensive to help another person for fear of being involved in a lawsuit or dealing with liability issues.

however, do we have a moral obligation to help others, even if we weren't the ones who caused the incident? in regards to the "baby" instead being a death row inmate or convicted killer, do we have the right to choose which one we would rather save? of course, we can justify why we would choose one over the other, but is it morally correct? legally speaking, we are not liable for saving anyone if we were not the ones who caused the problem.

my question is, when should the law incorporate moral obligations into legal obligations? what is the line between moral duty of care to each other and our legal duties to help one another? in what situations should we be held liable for not meeting our moral duties?

just because we are morally responsible for things, should that become the legal norm?

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:47:27 GMT

today i cried.

i cried because i can't seem to understand why God loves us the way He does. i feel as though i should be more stressed out, more worried, more anxious, but i feel content right now. i feel like i've finally begun to let God lead me; i'm practically alone here and i don't know what to do but trust in God.

i went out to a bar the past few nights and i realized that i don't belong there and i never did. i realized that even when i try to be part of this world, God quietly whispers to me and i remember that He is there. still, how is it that He loves me regardless of what i've become or what i've done in my past? i feel like God touched my soul today and i don't understand why. i don't know how to thank God and when i try it turns into complete silence because i'm beyond awe.

God is good.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:18:32 GMT

my significant other and i want to get married. there's just one thing that's become an obstacle for us: his family doesn't believe in God. (all but one member, actually.) and now that we're having the more serious marriage talks, this problem is becoming more real to us. in our culture, you're one of two religions: Christian or Shamanist. even if you don't believe in either one, your family dictates which one you are (physically and ritualistically.) my boyfriend has been a Christian for about a year and a half now. i grew up in a Christian family so i don't really know what it's like to live in a family who doesn't believe in God.

now that we're seriously talking about marriage, the faith of our families has now come into conflict with our plans. in our culture, weddings consists of three parts that are very cultural and include both sides of the families and extended family. the first and the third part of the wedding includes alcohol and drinking. depending on what religion you are constitutes how much you will drink at the wedding. there's also a lot of negotiating that goes on at the wedding. the families negotiate who's going to pay what for the wedding, who's going to do what part of the wedding, and so on. depending on how much money the groom's side of the family gives to help the couple getting married also determines how much the couple owes the family back after the wedding and possibly for the rest of their lives. our culture is very much about pride in one's family and clan, etc.

our problem arises from these facts of the wedding. since we are Christians, we don't participate in the rituals of the Shamanist religion. (Rituals can consist of anything from parts of the wedding to baby's birth to sickness and health, etc. there is a ritual for certain things that call on the spirits in the afterworld to intervene. the religion includes sacrificing animals, tying strings to wrists, etc.) anyway, because we are Christians, it is against our faith to practice such rituals. however, if the groom's side of the family helps out with a lot of money and other things about the wedding, we will late owe it to his side of the family to participate in those kinds of things. they are also expecting that we put the family before our faith and if family calls us to participate in rituals, they will ask us to put our religion aside so that we can partake in the ceremonies and rituals.

we are torn about this because there's no way that we would ever give up God to please his side of the family. however, it's difficult for my significant other to reject his family after all that they'll have done for us with the wedding. it's hard to "make them understand" because our culture is very much about the culture and nothing else; a lot of pride and stubbornness occurs in our culture.

God commands us to put nothing else before Him in His very first commandment, which includes your family, friends, and even your culture. i have faith that God will see us through these trials, but i know it will take a lot of prayer to endure those struggles in the first place. sometimes it seems like it would make life so much easier to follow the world and give up God, but i know that without God my life would be nothing. for the next few years, i know that we have no option but to trust in God and let God lead.