Matthew 1-5

I don't know why, buy I held off reading until today. I'm sure there is some form of significance for it that I'm just yet able to understand. I woke up before the puppies today for the first time ever. I was rather eager to get going and read the good news of the gospel and I am happy to say my day has started off right.

I never understood why Matthew was the first Book in the Bible until today, But the message hit me loud and clear today. In the first few chapters it deal with what was culturally significant at the time. starts out with Blood lines: Abraham to David, David to Exile in Babylon, then Babylon to Jesus. Then it states a few of the things that the Jews would be looking for, such as Jesus's family going to Egypt so that they could say he came out of Egypt and then Joseph moving to Nazarene (Both facts that are insignificant today but would have been what the "in the know" Jew would be looking for).

To me though, this is where it got interesting. I'm sure that everyone has heard about how Jesus's Ministry was only for a very short part of his life, But Matthew in a very short language tells us the bare bones of how Jesus had to prepare for his ministry. First he went out to be baptised by John the Baptist. A simple Gesture that is entirely complex when you think about how and why Jesus didn't need it. Whatever you belief as to why he got baptised the simple fact remains that he did. The second thing that I thought was incredibly intriguing was what happened next. In Chapter 4 Jesus was tempted by the devil. He was told to turn Rocks into Bread, Jump off a building to command angels, and the devil offered him "ruler over all the land he could see". Of course Jesus passed these three tests with flying colors with Witty retorts.

I guess my main take away from today was that Before Jesus could start his ministry on earth he had to endure what I can only assume was awful. Lets face it, often we may believe that the devil is staring us right in the face hidden in whatever adversity we may be faced with, But here Jesus is literally being stared in the face by the devil and being tempted. This is where I read into the pages further today than any other day, correct or not. Before Jesus could do the most important work of his life, he first had to hit the lowest of lows. He needed to be Tempted by the devil himself.

The rest is history, immediately after that Jesus went up and assembled a top notch team of disciples and followers "fishers of men" and went directly into the Sermon on the Mount. This Sermon I personally believe to be one of the more inspiring Speeches in the history of man kind, telling us that it is not the rich and powerful that will truly win out in the end. But truly those humble followers who place others first.

One thing I've always wondered about the Sermon on the Mount is why we as a people (we includes me) leave out the second half. True, the first half is aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and the second half is in pesky paragraph format, but it does teach us some important truths about not giving up on marriage except in the case of adultery, controlling your lust (I believe this was personally directed more toward our generation that first century Jews), and controlling anger. Powerful stuff but like it or not it is stuff that is part of the good news of Christ and should be treated as such.

My final take aways from today: today's Scripture was a big deal. I like a lot of people out there, I'm going through a ruff patch financially. we have 3 appliances broken and I am looking at the most real threat of losing my home I have ever faced. The lesson Jesus taught today, was that this is the calm before the storm. Not that things will get worse financially or anything like that, which they might, but that big things are coming in life and my small issues are not important. I heard a good saying the other day: "Don't tell God how big the storm is, tell the storm how big your god is". I can promise that God is bigger than whatever storms we may be facing.

thanks all, and I hope everyone day finds you well.

a new idea

I deleted off some of my older posts, they were all about Politics and the Job that I was in at the time. It was euphoric, often it is great to remove what you've stated in the past.

With that said, I think that I have a new direction to go. For a little bit of background, I am a christian although the path to get there was a rocky one. Growing up I believe I was in the best possible situation in that I was constantly surrounded by well meaning people. Starting at birth, my loving Mother took myself and my four older brothers to the LDS Church. It had a profound effect on my spiritual life growing up. I watched each one of my siblings, each in there own way, fall way from the church. I also watched my Mothers take on why they fell away and what caused it (which again was different in each instance) and often was directed at my equally well meaning father.

I decided that my life was going to be different. I decided that I believed in god and that I needed god in my life. that's simple right? that means I will always go to church and be a faithful follower? not so, unfortunately I went through a wild period, where sad to say I believed in God but I did not believe that I needed any sort of leadership or church. Those who are exposed to the LDS church may know what I mean. Often many LDS youth either grow up to become atheist or go back to the LDS church where a clear path is given as to what you are to do. knowing this (false dilemma) after I got married (also to a girl who grew up LDS very similar to me) we went back to the LDS church. Unfortunately we were both 19. for a little background it is very evident when you are under 21 in the LDS church that you did not go on your Mission, which is very highly "recommended", so it is then evident that my life had gone very astray somewhere in life.

Even with this being said, we went back to the LDS church. My wife and I took up church callings and even went to the LDS Temple where we went through our endowment and were sealed (wikipeadia has good articles if your ever curious). Problem is that during the Temple ceremony is where everything went wrong. During my teenage years I had looked very heavily into the Freemasons, and while I was in the temple there were too many similarities for comfort.

one of the issues with the LDS church is that they give you all the good and tell you that anything bad or anything that paints the LDS church as negative is Anti-Mormon Literature. So you are so scared to look at anything negative from non-lds sources and everything from any LDS sources has basically been buried (this is a blog, I don't need references, but they are out there(also not the point of the blog)). So in the next few months after much argument in my mind I basically came to this understanding. In every other decision in life you weigh the good vs the bad and make a decision. that means, you have to look at the negative. Even if it means looking at Anit-Mormon Lit.

So I did, and my LDS faith fell apart, But still deep down I believed in God. This is where my wife is awesome. She went out to find another church. Now we were afraid (putting it lightly). not of any other churches, but instead of running into anyone who we knew at that new church. We knew a lot of people, so we decided that we could not look at any churches in our town CDA. So she looked into churches in Spokane WA. she looked on the Internet and somehow found Life Center which was where I was meant to be for the moment. First week I went, Life Center had a message for me. It was the most basic lesson a christian can have, which was how you obtain Grace. They removed out my old thoughts that was I needed to repent to find perfection so when God Judges me I'm found worthy. To me realising, I'm a sinner (which I can understand easily enough) and that I need to be saved by Christ. It was easy to understand and basic.

To make a long story short (too late :)), I did something I'd tried to do but never succeeded at. I started reading the Bible. part of this is explained easily by the fact that I picked up a NIV bible and no longer had to deal with a triple translation (from the original language, to old English, to my understanding which is faulty). But I was so happy that was regularly reading and after a while I made it through the New testament (first time in life). Then I started on the old testament, I was doing good too. Until I changed Jobs and it messed with my morning routine, and to mess with things further we got a puppy (who doesn't like to let her dad sit down and read). Well now I am able to sit down again and read my Bible again.

This is what this Blog will be about. I am going to start again. its going to go a little backwards (starting with the new and moving to the old testament). But my plan is to read the Bible each weekday and then go blog about each days readings. This is entirely selfish, for me to retain more information, and I don't believe that anyone will follow the blog, but for what it is worth its been a long time coming.