jaydeltathree

I heard you

God got a hold of me at church today. I don't remember why, but I think somebody was praying and it made me think about a verse that I'd read in Acts earlier in the week. I began to search for the verse to read the complete thing. I had a hard time finding it and almost gave up, but didn't. The verse was Acts 12:2, where the Holy Spirit tells the believers to separate Paul and Barnabas for His work. I was wondering how you get to the point where you can sense God speaking something like this. As I read again, I saw in verse 1 and 2 that there were a small group of men that were 'ministering unto the Lord.' This included fasting. Then, during the next prayer, somebody quoted a passage of scripture. I don't know exactly where it was--I think it was Avery reading--but the passage definitely mentioned fasting (though I just did a bible search and couldn't find it). Anyway, then when the Pastor started preaching, he talked about moving forward with God by stopping. The passage was Nehemiah 9, and he talked about how the people came to God with fasting. So I got it. If I want to hear from God, I need to be fasting.

The color blue, something forgotten, and sex

As I was running, I was thinking about my inability to explain some things to my children about the things of God. God reminded me that this isn't because of some shortcoming on my part. At some point words fail in explaining spiritual things. Just like words fail in trying to describe the color blue to a blind man, words fail in describing spiritual things to someone who is not spiritual. If you don't have that sense to provide reference, you just can't understand.

I've forgotten the second thing that came to me as I was cooling down...perhaps it will come back to me.

When I was on the porch, somehow my thoughts drifted onto the fact that when we lose sight of the purpose of a thing, we get in trouble. I forget how I got onto this particular line of thought, but sex is where it led. Oh, now I remember, I was thinking about abortion, and how the controversy boils down to right to life. But the reality is that we want sex without consequences. But reproduction is the purpose of sex. The pleasure is just a bonus. Just like eating. The purpose of eating is to fuel our bodies; the fact that we can enjoy food is just a consolation. But when we put the enjoyment of food over its real purpose, we are setting ourselves up for trouble.

It seems like I am shooting myself in the foot, here, but the truth is the truth. So does that meant that we should not have sex unless we are trying to reproduce? Hmm...

Current Musings

I came down with some kind of flu bug last night. Not something terribly vicious, but enough for me to wuss out and not study today. I just finished reading Randy Alcorn's Deadline. Strangely enough, I read his latest novel, Deception, first. I was in a bookstore in Florida looking for something to read since I wasn't really into the beach thing like the rest of the family. Deception caught my eye, but when I realized it was part of the series, I looked at the earlier books. After looking briefly at what the other books were about, I decided to go with the one that got my attention in the first place.

Anyway, my thoughts now are not so much of the book, but I guess just kind of about Christianity in general. Or my Christianity. Or me. It started a couple of days ago. I started thinking again about who I am, and why I am this way. I'm thinking that its not by accident. God has shaped me into the person that I am on purpose. But to what end?

I've always felt that I was different. And not necessarily special, better than everyone else. Just different. Despite the spectacular shortcomings of my walk as a Christian as a young person, I can remember that I actually did want to serve God. I can remember making a sincere dedication to Him. I can remember reading the scriptures, and wondering why I didn't see anybody doing the things I was reading. I remember telling myself that it must be okay, but not really being convinced.

And now thinking of this, I am convinced that there are more people out there like me. Obviously there have always been people that have a heart bent towards God, you can find many of them in your local church. But there must have been others like me, who didn't have the same upbringing that I did, not born into a God-fearing, church-going family, but still had that inner inclination. And just like my young dedication became stifled in lukewarmness and materialism, there are no doubt many others who experienced the same or worse, depending on how many seeds were actually sown into their life.

This is an aside, but its a good one, because it ties into the thing I was thinking about when Steve was preaching. God has called us to be disciples, to MAKE disciples. And now I am thinking that's not the same thing as the thing we call soul-winning. The bible also says that we are to compel men to come in. Freely we have received, and we should freely give. But God is pro-choice. And many men have made their decision. The wonderful thing about decisions is that we are allowed to change our minds. But so many people in our culture have already heard the good news and aren't interested. Its very discouraging sometimes. But I'm thinking that I should always be on the lookout for that one among many, that person that has that thing in their heart. Of course I'm also remembering that the bible says we should cast our bread upon the waters, so that it doesn't mean that I should be stingy with the word of God, but the bible also teaches us to have discernment. If we cast pearls before swine, we shouldn't be surprised when the result is exactly what the bible tells it should be. But we were swine at some point too. Okay, I'm going in circles now, but I guess I'm thinking that there are times that we just cast out our nets and see what happens, and there are times when our efforts are much more deliberate and precise.

But back to the original thought: who am I? I am a guy who really does want to please God, and I want to do whatever it takes to fulfill the calling he's called me to. In some areas I have a decent degree of detachment to the things of this world, and yet there are some things in this world I am very attached to, some more than others. Sadly, over the past decade, I've undone a lot of the progress of detachment that had been done when I first started walking this walk. I've definitely accumulated a lot more things, which isn't necessarily bad, but some attachment has come along with some of the things. It seems harder to let go of the things of this world than it did back then, but maybe that's just an illusion. It certainly wasn't easy back then either.

I see that I am very much attracted to fiction and fantasy. When I back off from them, they start to permeate my dreams, and I find myself not wanting to wake up because I'm as engrossed in my dreams as I would be in a television program. I can't do anything about my dreams, can I? Maybe the whole thing isn't as unhealthy as I've been thinking? But anything becomes unhealthy when excess is involved. And for me that seems to be the case. Even now, with me reading a Christian novel, once I start reading, I don't want to stop. I will read into the wee hours of the morning. I'd never thought much about it before, but that can be just as distracting as if I had been watching TV, at least as far as my schedule is concerned. I can be just as grouchy if someone wants to me to do something that would pull me away from the book. And with books, I actually end up spending much more time reading than I would watching TV.

But still, I'm now considering the possibility that the fiction thing may not be bad, but I still have to control it just like everything else in my life. Like eating. Eating isn't bad, but right now its one of the biggest struggles in my life. Just because something is good doesn't mean that you don't have to but boundaries and restrictions on it, and keep it under control. Just because you have problems with something and have to put boundaries and restrictions on it, doesn't make it bad.

Somewhere down the line, I became open to the idea that totally removing things from my life, that seem irrevocably linked to our culture, was a viable option. Thinigs like television. Now that I'm thinking about it, I didnt think that doing those things proved that I was some kind of superchristian, that I was better than everybody else. I actually thought it was because I was weaker than other Christians, that they could handle watching TV without being totally glued to the set, while I can't. But there were other thoughts too. I guess one of them was maybe self-congratulatory that I would even consider such 'radical' moves in my Christian walk. There has also been the influence of legalism in my life. Carolina and I had this talk awhile back. There has long been this thought on the edge of my conscious thought that legalism was bad, but it wasn't as bad as license, because at least you were trying, at least you were doing something. Now I see that as false. In fact, as Carolina said, legalism is probably worse, because it is the breeding ground for self-righteousness, which is terribly destructive because you can get off the path and still think you are right.

I have pretty solid admin skills. I've worked as a clerk and seriously considered human resources as a career. Also thought about accounting, as I'm at home with numbers. I've had a love for computers since I was seven years old. I still don't know half of what I want to know, but the fact that I've got four computers in this house right now, one of which is at my feet with the cover open and the power supply pulled out, kind of shows where I am in that regard.

I'm in the Army. I learned how to fly helicopters. I joined because it seemed like the right thing to do, a win-win situation. Serve my country and gain skills in the process. I wasn't particularly interested in leadership, management or operations, but up until recently that was my entire Army experience. Now I've shifted into a more technical field.

I am interested in theology. Just like computers, there is so much more about Christianity and God that I want to know. I kick myself that I haven't take the time to take formal classes to learn more. I've thought about being a Christian counselor. I think that I know how to listen to people, and I like to help people solve their problems.

Communications wise is a mixed bag. I think that I've gotten much worse in speaking than i used to be. My brain is like hard drive that needs to be defragged. I get stuck in the middle of sentences because I'm looking for the perfect word. Or I have to start sentences over again because the word I wanted to use doesn't come up. I feel like I sound pretty stupid. When I have prepared speeches, people say I have a very soothing voice. Does that mean I put them to sleep? I have been complemented on my reading. I've been told I have a radio voice. I used to envy the voice God gave Victor Boutte, a voice that you just could not ignore, but I did learn long ago that God made Victor to be Victor, and he made me to be me, so I shouldn't be envious about what God gave him.

But I guess that's what all this is about. It seemed pretty obvious what God called Victor to, but it hasn't been clear to me where God is calling me. I realize that one reason is because I haven't been listening. I've been distracted, sidetracked and to be blunt, I've been in bondage to sin for many years. But in those moments of clarity, I usually find myself asking, 'So what am I supposed to be doing now?'

And yeah, I got it. My immediate mission is to be a husband and father. To raise a godly family. But I guess I'm wondering what else. Every husband and father has that mission. I'm looking at where life has taken me, how I've been shaped, and thinking there's more to it than just that.

Limiting children's computer time

Apparently I have created a monster. It seems like all my children want to do is spend time on the computer. I also have to face facts though. For some reason I have been wanting to think of a computer as a business machine, a productivity machine, when I have a computer in the living room! That's not for business, that's strictly for entertainment. But my daughters spend a lot of time on it, and they get beastly if they're interrupted from their reverie. We don't have television per se, as you can't get any stations on our TV, but now the girls are watching television shows directly from web sites, so its the same thing.

All of a sudden it hit me, there's probably software out there to limit the amount of time that kids can be on the computer. This thought hit me immediately after the thought that I could probably write some kind of code to accomplish this. That shows how lazy I am. Anyway, I got online, and I found a website called Software Time, that markets a program called Computer Time. It seemed to do what I was interested in, so I plan to talk to Carolina about it. They also have a 14 day trial, which is good. We are currently using Glubble, but it leaves some things to be desired. This Computer Time program is supposed to do some Internet limiting too, so that's worth looking into. That's another reason why I thought about writing my own program, but that takes loads of time. Basically though, I'm thinking that a internet limiting program is basically just a firewall with some type of web interface. I also found a site with lots of different programs to choose from, but I don't have time to do through all of them.

This past weekend

So what all happened? We left Friday night to go to my mother's house. We got there and then went to Taqueria Arandas for dinner. After we finished eating, my mother went to Kroger's and we went back to the house. I don't know exactly when she got in, as I went to bed sometime after 10pm. I woke up around 6am and left for Port Arthur to have breakfast with my father. We went to Conn's and looked at a very nice priced digital SLR camera. He also took me by Lois's so that I could meet her granddaughter, who was celebrating her third birthday that day. We went back to his house and I made the mistake of getting on the computer. We had been talking about Linux distributions, so I downloaded virtualBox so he could play around with some distros in there. In the process I also ended up downloading utorrent and 7zip. That kept me there later than I should have been, as I'd told Carolina I'd be back before the morning was over.

When I got ready to leave my dad's, he noticed that the rear driver's side tire was almost flat. He guided me to a shop where I got a cheap replacement, and then I headed back to Houston. By the time I got there, it was after 3pm. We hung out there for awhile, and then went to Maria's. My brother-in-law was on the porch relaxing with one of his friends, Ivan. Ivan explained to me that I was rude to him the last time I was there--I walked past him many times and never spoke. I remembered that the last time I had a terrible headache, plus I wasn't sure he spoke english. He demonstrated his understanding of several languages, including German and Arabic. He picked these up as a merchant marine. After leaving there, we went to see my other sister-in-law Rosalba. We stayed there for awhile and then came home.

Sunday we went to church as usual, but I started the day off much better than usual. I'd gotten to bed around 10 or 11 the night before, so I got up around 7 and decided to put on an old CD and sing along in praise to God. The CD was Jesus is Alive. That really got me going spiritually. I then went out and ran two miles. I showered and then we got off to church. Carolina was helping with the preschoolers, so she left early by herself. Since I'd already gotten off to a good start in the morning, I was really moved in the service. I had already been moved to tears once that morning by myself, and it happened twice during the praise and worship at church. It felt good. I can remember when this happened before, and I've always taken it to mean that God is moving and doing that work in my heart that I've asked him to do, to take away the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh, a heart that is tender and receptive to His voice. One of the deacons spoke about justice and retribution. The examples he gave from his own life were very powerful.

When I got home, I found that the network connection wasn't working. I'd tried it the night before and thought I just needed to reboot my laptop, but I found that I just wasn't receiving a signal from the modem gateway. I went to the computer with the wired connection and was able to connect without a problem. I rebooted the modem with no results. I checked the user's manual and went through the troubleshooting steps, also with no results. Finally, I called Motorola. I was pleasantly relieved to find that the customer service was knowledgable, not reading from some canned script or something. Apparently, while we were in Houston, the channel I was using became overrun, possibly by the nearby ISP. The customer service rep also mentioned my WEP 128-bit settings as a possible culprit, but I'd never had a problem with them before. Anyway, we got it fixed. I also took this opportunity to switch from WEP to WPA.

I also got a pleasant surprise that afternoon as I got a call from SGM Quarles. I'd sent him a letter a week ago with my contact information. We talked for awhile, and I told him I'd be trying to contact Julio and get with Silvia so we could get something together.

Yesterday

Yesterday I basically wasted an entire day. I don't mean that I did not do one productive thing the entire day--if nothing else I sent our defective wireless keyboard back to be replaced. What I mean is that I didn't do what I was supposed to do. After I came back from the Post Office, I came to the library, and I was supposed to work on my thesis. Right now that means that I need to be learning about intrusion detection, gaining knowledge about the subject matter. I did not do that. I spent the entire day surfing the web, looking at computers, televisions, digital pianos, but not one time did I crack a book. Its pretty sad. I am going to do better today.