Helicopter

If a helicopter flies up in the air and hovers for 15 hours, then goes straight down will it land in another country or right back down at the same spot.

Missing the Church

So lately I have really been missing the church. For those of you who don't know I used to be a pastor and am currently working at comcast for the time being. Talk about a job change. I went to granger community tonight, and heard the amazingly talented Jason Miller. He had a great message on worship and not losing the beauty of it and what it is and a whole lot of other stuff, but very good. Yet, I felt myself feeling sad after leaving. Why? Because I miss the church. I miss working in it influencing people, being influenced by people. I'm scared and really excited at the idea of getting back (more excited) into a church position. I've even had some weird dreams of just missing the church but that's a whole other story. I think most of all I miss the relationships. Well pray for me and my wife and we figuere out what God wants us to do on this.

Game

I thought of a game at work the other day. A guy said that he has a zune and you can send pictures and music wirelessley. He said he often finds other people wirelessley at the mall. So we decided next time he should take a picture of himself and send it to someone in the mall and tell them to find him. It's like where's waldo.

Ipod shuffle

So since Terry Linhart said to post what our ipod shuffle I did it and this is what I got.

1. Ending of a Story by Never Ending White Lights. Bought this cause the guy did a song with switchfoot I found on the internet. Unfortunately the song wasn't on the cd. Oh well.
2. Take by Skillet.
3. Amatuer Lovers by Switchfoot. Surprised it took this long for a switchfoot song to come up.
4. If we were Lovers by All Star United. Old song but fun. It was like #1 in Japan.
5. Water Under the Bridge by Jars of Clay. They are a classic band. I would like to see them in concert again. They are just really good muscians.
6. God of Wonders by Caedmons Call.
7. Locked in a Cage by Skillet. This is a great song. Sounds wierd but great message. Their old stuff was a lot better.
8. It's all who you know by Newsboys. This was a great cd especially "lost the plot."
9. There is a River by Jars of Clay.
10. Soul Meets Body by Death Cab for Cutie. Very good musicians and good music. Jeremiah Lauber introduced me to them for which I am quite thankful. This some of my favorite styles of music.

I'm surprised more switchfoot didn't come up, thats sad. My favorite song of theirs "Life and Love and Why." It has great words and a great progression of music.

Computers

So I thought I would post ways on how to keep your computer healthy. Why? I don't really know just cause I like computers.

1. Use a virus scan but only one of them. Having two tend to conflict with each other and are both working at the same time killing processing speed. I recommend avg, because it is free and good.

2. Use a spyware scanners at least weekly. I recommend ad-aware or spybot S&D. You can use two virus scans cause unlike virus scans they are not constantly monitoring your system. They only check it when you tell it to.

3. I also like to use C Cleaner. It fixes your registry which is very important to your computer. It also cleans up cache and interenet files.

4. Have enough ram. People know this now but ram is really important.

5. Eliminate all those programs in the bottom right corner from starting up when your computer does. This can often be done in the programs options or go under the start menu and click run on the right. Then type in msconfig and hit enter. Then click the startup tab. This lists all the files that start up on your computer when you start it. Uncheck unnecessary ones so they will not start up with windows (this does not delete the program it just keeps it from starting up when you boot windows.)

6. don't download files you don't know what they are that end in ".exe" this stands for executable which will launch a program. So if you don't know what the program is and you get it in your email and looks suspicious don't download it.

7. Keep your computer cool. This is huge. A cold computer runs faster. I reccomend at least 2 times a year opening up the case taking an air duster and blowing it out. Dust makes things hot and bogs it down. Really dust the processor which should sit right about the middle of the mother board in your computer and have a fan just for it.

There's much more to do but this is a good start. If you have questions ask. Also, to avoid most of these issues you can simply buy a MAC. I don't use MAC's myself but they are nice and run very efficiently. I like PC's very much though.

Don't Expect Much

My mom told me when I was a kid that if you ever do something nice for someone don't expect anything in return. She said God woud repay me in his own way. Pretty good advice. Sometimes we take this a little far though and start doing good things for the sake of getting a reward from God. I've always had this picture of this guy trying to run around heaven with his head full of crowns for his good deeds, saying "Look at what good things I did on earth." Yeah, not really how it's supposed to work out. The goal of those crowns is to lay them at Christs feet. When you do good things, do them for Christ and expect nothing in return except the satisfaction of knowing that you have furthered the kingdom.

Thoughts from the Past

I was thinking about this summer and the various church camps that will go on. These were always a great spiritual high time in life and I think most youth and adults wonder how do we stay on that type of spiritual high. Well I'm not sure that life is meant to be completely a high as in everythings perfect but we are always supposed to stay as close to God as possible. I know the first thing that comes to mind for staying close are devotions and prayer. In other words camp is a time often we are talking and listening to God. I think part of what we lose after these camps are EXPECTATIONS. At camp we excpect God to do something great after word we just expect life to be normal. We don't expect God to meet with us at work or school. Also, the whole talking and listening to God part tends to die down or become non-existent. I know this isn't all the answer just things I've thought of. If you have any more to add please feel free to do so.

Cleanliness

I was reading something in Proverbs today that talked about how we are pure in our own eyes. I think this happens a lot in my own Christian life. I compare my life to that of non-christians and say look how much cleaner I am than them. Well duh that doesn't do me much good. I rarely compare myself to Christ because I know what the outcome will be, but then again isn't that the goal. I remember Dr. Long talking about being like Christ. He brought up the point if our goal is to be like Christ then why don't we think we can reach it. After all God said we can do all things through him who strengthens us. Do we doubt the power of God or do we doubt ourselves?

Graduation

There have been many graduations going on lately. Unfortanetly I couldn't go to many open houses cause I work during a lot of them. I have one piece of advice that was given to me by my brother when going to college. No matter what college you choose when you get there choose your friends wisely. I think this is great advice. Even if you go to a christian college you can get caught in the wrong crowd. So choose wisely. I loved Bethel and am glad for my years there and am happpy with the friends I chose. They can make or break the path you follow God on in college. Of course there are other factors too but this plays a bigger role than most realize.

Day Off

So I get Wednesday off and usually have nothing to do. I don't have a vehicle to go anywhere so I sit around, play video games, clean the place, and post on here. My wife asked me one time why guys like video games so much and it came to me. I have read John Eldridge's "Wild at heart." It's pretty good. He says how guys need adventure and at the moment she asked that I realized that for many this is our battlefield. This is our adventure where we go and save the princess (In my case Zelda right now "Twilight Princess"). I really am not anti-video games but I wonder what danger this could cause by living out false realities and not having our own personal adventures. I remember people always saying don't play video games play a board game and get to know people. I don't think they realize though how many people we meet playing video games. Now often interaction won't go much past the game but there have been instances where I have made friends over them. Certain games are made for interaction like many on the Wii. I like this system a lot because it has cleaner games and is active and fun for any age. Ok done rambling. I'll post something better soon.

Back to Creation

So I've kind of had this discussion with some friends and I'm a little confused as to what to think on this. If you have any help out there let me know. We have talked about the fall of man and how before it was perfect. Some suggested that we should attempt in our current fallen state to retract back to perfection as best as possible. That all sounds well and good but I'm really wondering how close to that picture we can really get since we are fallen. Are there certain things that we just cannot do anymore since we have fallen (obviously communication with God is different and perfections out of the picture)? So often I think of this perfection as doing everything right but I think it is a lot more than that. A lot of what needs to change is our mindset. We don't look at the world the same and even more so we don't look at God the same. I think this is what Romans 12:1-2 is talking about in the renewing of our mind. It's a whole different outlook on life. A lot of this stemmed from a friend who saw art in a library that was rather questionable. Before the fall a naked body was normal and now it is not. It is things like that and others that I'm not sure we go back to being like before the fall. It is hard to unknow that you are naked. I don't want to limit God in what he can do but I think there are consequences to sin and some may be unreversible.