More Prayer Advance Pictures

Well, Gabe came over this past week, and he and I swapped photos. So now I have some more Prayer Advance pictures that I promised I would have. One of them is SO good I'm going to add it to my "photos" page. Take a guess as to which. :) 

Early morning sun just coming over the hill

Me and Mr. Myers holding up Gabe while he secured the tent lights

Iwo Jima re-enactment?

An evening shot, over the wash behind the camp

My absolute favorite.
"Taking Dominion"

Trust and Obey

        We've all heard that song, "Trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."
        We sing it, and many other songs so many times, we often forget the meaning or the power behind what the words mean. A simple hymn can be so boring, dry and monotonous, until we stop to read the words carefully and search out their meaning, and when we sing them from the heart with their meaning, there is no better songs on earth.
         Sorry, sideline thought. Anyways, trust and obey - it sounds simple.... right? I mean honestly, how hard can it be? We merely have to recognize and believe that God's in control, and obey him in our daily lives, right?
        Well, if we come at it with that sort of nonchalant "pie in the sky"mindset,  just "trust in God, and all will be well" said with a high british accent to make us sound religious, it can sound very easy indeed.
        Ever tried?
        I have come to realize in extreme ways recently how powerful this phrase is. If we really trust in God, I mean REALLY TRUST IN GOD, not just say you do, give us this day our daily bread, etc., but REALLY TRUST TO GOD EVERYTHING THAT IS IN YOUR LIFE AND RELEASE YOUR GRIP AND CONTROL ON YOUR LIFE AND WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH IT, your life changes.
        BIG TIME.
        First things first, what is trust, and how do we do the ole thing anyway? If you wanted to cross a chasm, 3000 feet deep, would you rather walk across on a shaky rope bridge, dry-rotted with sun, frayed with age, or a concrete and rebar golden-gate-bridge imitation firmly secured to both edges of the canyon? Which one would you feel comfortable setting all your weight on and crossing that chasm, knowing if the bridge breaks, you die with it?
        It's not a really hard choice, but that's a picture of trust, and ultimately, trusting in God. His promises in His word is the "concrete", or "rebar" that fixes the bridge securely to both sides of that gorge, and we can trust in them fully. They have withheld the weight of many a redeemed sinner in years previous, and little ole you ain't gonna be no different, and it don't matter none what you had for lunch. (Sorry, I revert to deep redneck occasionally)  :)
        That doesn't mean you only pray for "our daily bread" at meal times, with a fridge full of food that you think that you provided. That mean you do as God would have you do NO MATTER THE COST. I heard tell of a family who was nigh on out of money, and after paying all the bills, the only money they had left was tithe money. They were left with a horrible decision. To buy a weeks worth of groceries, or to give to God what he had commanded. They chose to trust in God, and that Sunday, they put the check in the offering plate as it went round. When they got home, there were bags of groceries waiting at the front door.
        THAT, is trust. THAT, is faith. THAT, is putting all you weight on the bridge, not knowing what will happen, but knowing that God said it will stand and that he will take care of you. That is TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD AND KNOWING THAT HE WILL PROVIDE.  
        This kind of faith blows the britches off modern Christians. They say it won't work in today's society. They say it's foolhardy and cruel to not buy your children food and put it in the hat as it goes round. I mean, after all man, think! (translated: Whoa dude, You cant just trust God like that, it's just.... just... unthinkable! Trust the rope bridge instead!!)
        I call it trust, and faith. They mean the same thing; Believing that what God said is real, IS real.
        I almost covered my second point. Obey. If we really trust, we will obey. If we believe that God said in his word that he he will not let the righteous famish, we are more than willing to put that check in the hat, cause we know "the Lord'l provide" (said with a deep Alabama accent of course) :)
        This means doing what is right, come what may. I heard a quote by General Jackson once.  "Duty is ours, consequences are God's".
        In Leviticus 26, God lists how he will bless us if we obey, and tells us of all the blessing he will bestow on us besides, but it goes on to list as well, what God will to do us and our children and grandchildren if we disobey, and put our faith and trust on that rope bride across the gorge. To put it plainly, he'll walk up with a machete and slice the ropes in two and watch you fall to your doom.
        However, today is the day of salvation. If we believe in our hearts (and actually do it, being not just hearers of the word) He is just and willing to forgive us from all unrighteousness, and cleanse us from our sins. The concrete bridge isn't within jumping distance with your own measly two legs, but Christ is standing on the bridge, and leaning his arm way out to you, just waiting for you to grab on.
        Just waiting for you to trust and obey.          

Mens Prayer Advance

        Well, it was my first one, and great at that. Here's the brief summary:
          We (Mr. Cyr and Malachi and I) all got out there, after many return trips to home, Walmart, and such, at around 5:30 on Thursday. There was one talk that night by pastor, then after half dragging Matt away from his guitar, him, Josie and I walked and talked in the wide desert till about 12:30, the moon being so bright that we didn't need any lights at all! The next morning I got up at 6:00 to help Mr. Hoodenpyle make breakfast, and boy, THAT was something. Gabe and I, well, weren't the neatest, despite all our desperate attempts to keep the majority of the pancakes ON the griddle, not in the general vicinity AROUND the griddle. A much harder task that it sounds. The batter was so soupy, when you tried to flip it, because the bottom was cooked and the top wasn't, when you flipped it, you splattered batter hither and yon. (splendid) Then, when Gabe would pour some more in, it would drip all over the place in-between the bowl and the griddle. (getting worse by the moment)
        So, breakfast (or what there was that was actually ON the griddle) being eaten, we listened to several more sessions that morning, ate lunch, (a MUCH cleaner escapade) had one more session, then it broke up for prayer, wherever you wished. Mr. Kindred and I went down the wash for quite a ways, found a shady tree to sit under, and prayed and read scripture for about twenty minutes, then hunted for rattlers to blast on the way back :)
        One more session that night after dinner, inter-sparsed with sword-fights around the fire and through the hills.  Then all the men gathered together around the fire for prayer, where I, at around 11:15ish through 11: 35ish, zonked beside the fire, trying to pray. Ok, you have to admit, I had a right to be tired!
        Anyway, when the prayer time ended at midnight, I found I was not even the slightest bit sleepy anymore! So Josie and I put on some hot chocolate over the fire, and while the other men talked away, we practiced our fast-draw on the far side of the tent ( the pistols being unloaded of course) being soon joined by Brennan stuffing down muffins (we almost reloaded our guns for that....) :):) jk
        Then, at about 1:30 or so, Josie went to bed, and Mr. Arrington, Mr. Melton, Brennan and I sat around the fire talking and laughing at Mr. Arrington dragging a whole tree (literally) and putting it on the fire. He had found it lying dead in camp, and hauled it over. We asked if he knew of a bigger one,  since obviously we were going to run out of firewood REALLY soon, and he said that yes, there was a bigger  tree over there, do you want me to get it? LOL
        So I finally went to bed when the rest of them turned it at around 2:30, and didn't wake up until almost seven the next morning.
        So, after breakfast (much cleaner this time, due to the fact Gabe and I were out of camp searching for rattlers and taking pictures) we listened to another session and a discussion time, and then after lunch, cleaned up and left.
        Aren't you glad I didn't go into details?? :):)
        So, all of the topics talked on were nothing new to me, in fact, to the group we were in, it was almost preaching to the choir, but very instructive none-the-less. The thing that impacted me the most was our very deep, soul-searching talk at midnight with Matt and Josie, and several talks with Gabe about various topics around the camp and walking around, and my prayer time with Mr. Kindred. Extremely powerful.
        Oh, don't get me wrong, we had loads of other fun as well. Gabe and I taking on the rock fortress with foes twice our number, sword in hand, watching other people sword-fighting around the fire, Mr. Hudelson vs. Pastor turning into a wrestling match in the sand, roaring at stories at 2:30 in the morning of Mr. Arrington sleep-walking and telling his wife (who woke up wondering what on earth he was doing) that he was going to shoot a spider on the wall a foot across.....
        Yeah, I had a great time, despite the fact I didn't get to shoot any rattlers. :) :)

Josie roasting dinner Thursday night

Before breakfast.....

AFTER breakfast....

Comrades in Christ (and breakfast) 

The group around the fire Friday morning

Mr. Hudelson preaching

Relaxing and talking after the prayer time on Friday afternoon

      Just so you know, Gabe is sending me more pictures he took, so stayed tuned for more!

Definitions

        Definition: an act of defining, a set of words explaining the meaning e.g. of a word, scientific principle or property, clearness of detail....... and on and on it goes, off into boredom and sleepiness.
Definitions. We all use them. ALL the time, and we take their meaning for granted sometimes. Let's start with something easy - cat. We all know what that is. A fury feline animal that yells at you when you want to be asleep and sheds fur all over your clean church clothes. :) Nice and easy, and we all can agree to that can't we? Lets have another easy one - heart. No wait, maybe this isn't as easy as it appears, because this could have a few meanings. It could mean the literal, blood-pumping organ inside your chest, thumpity-thumping away, night and day, or it could mean the center of something, the nerve-center, the "heart" of the issue. Starting to see how important this subject is? I didn't think so. Let me hit you with the big kahuna. How about big suckers like "Love", "Justice", "Good", "Evil", "Holiness", "Righteousness", etc. That set you back a bit didn't it? But wait, no, your self esteem and brains came to the rescue and saved the intellectual day. You started at the top: Love, and there you had to pause again didn't you? You are having a battle in your mind of how to define the word. If you're not saved, your mind flips to the worldly end, the mushy gushy emotional feeling you have when you look at your girlfriend or wife - or the feeling you have towards your favorite pizza, etc.  If you're saved, the regenerate half of your mind kicks in and tells you that no, that isn't right, it's a selfless devotion to someone else, no matter what they do to you.
        See the battle of definitions? This is a battle so little fought in our modern world, and one that we as Christians so commonly, DRASTICALLY lose at. It has been said, that he who rocks the cradle, rules the world. The only reason that is true, is because he who rocks the cradle, teaches the child in it the definitions of life.
        Life - there is another WHOPPER of a definition that we so often take for granted.
        Anyway, we submit hand and foot to the world's definitions of key points of life, and thereby agree to their meaning and implications. If a friend of ours is getting a divorce, and the reason is we don't "love" each-other any more, the first question that pops into my mind is, just how do YOU define love?
        Here's another one. we've all heard the phrase "you can't legislate morality". We've heard it thousands of times by people who are against laws being based on Biblical teaching. So often we accept that, buying in to their definitions of what "morality" is, and just what does that mean? It means a set of standards, or rules, that govern life. If we define it that way, you come to see that ALL laws are legislating morality. The question then becomes, whose standards are you buying into?
        Here is the key clincher. So often we use the worlds standards of right, and wrong, and good and bad, and the list goes on and on how we use THEIR standards, THEIR definitions. If the world grows up thinking that "love" means the mushy gushy feelings, then what do we do when the bible says "love your enemies" and we don't have that mushy gush? We're lost in the dark, wondering what to do. Or what if the world grows up thinking that Liberty is just doing as we please, and then "just doing as you please" for Joe on the corner, means killing those who he pleases as he pleases?
        See the gravity of the matter now? This issue is HUGE. There is a statement I heard once, "If you buy a statement, you buy the assumption behind it".
        We must NEVER assume what a word means, and be sure to define it as the BIBLE defines it ALL THE TIME, and never jump to the conclusion that someone you are talking to uses the word in the same light.
        Light - how do you define Light?
        Sorry, getting a bit carried away here, but you get the point. :)
Another big one the world messes up is "peace". After all, blessed are the peacemakers... God's definitions of peace, is life as God would have it, not everybody getting along with each other and nobody ever fighting or going to war - "coexist", if you will.
        Sorry, I'm really going off the deep end, but I hope you get the point.
        Make sure you ALWAYS use God's standards when it comes to life, and NEVER buy into the world's definitions on major issues, or even minor issues for that matter.
        I think the phrase needs to be changed to "He who defines words, rules the world."
        Fortunately for Christians, the one who defines the words for us, DOES rule the world. :)
        Soli Deo Gloria.  

Almost fine.....

Well, it looks like I'm on the up-side of the sickness now, I've been able to do my chores, go to the store, and work on a new holster for my pistol. (I am wearing both as I type this.) :) So, looks like I'm almost up to par.
So, it's back to business I go!    

"The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" and "Secretariat"

        Old movie and new movie. One came out back in the fifty's, one, this past month. Any of you who knows anything about movies knows which was which. I know almost nothing about modern movies, and yet I still know which is which. As far as I can tell, these two movies have almost nothing in common, in fact, the only reason I grouped them together is for the mere fact that I saw both of them within the past two days.  "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" I saw Sunday when I was sick, "Secretariat" I saw yesterday.
        So here we go, I'm going to play the role of movie reviewer. (Drum role please)
        TGTB&TU, is a old movie with modern ideas. It blurs the lines of good very hard, the "good guy" being played by the most famous modern cowboy of the golden screen, Clint Eastwood. In my opinion, the only reason he's a good guy is because he keeps the guy dubbed "ugly" in the title, from getting his grubbing hands on the money to soon, and because he shoots the bad guy in the end. One of the few things I like about the movie, is that, since the made the good guy not-so-good, they at least made the bad guy, REALLY BAD. Everything from shooting an old man in bed to torturing prisoners to see if they have info about a missing stash of $200,000 in gold coins. The "ugly" guy is a renegade who is wanted by the law and is constantly escaping due to the help of Clint. (Great good guy!) All through the movie, it is a race for who can get to the gold first, at all costs. A movie that proclaims in broad terms, "The end justifies the means." At least, that's the message it proclaims to a Christian. To a worldly mindset, all the stuff that I would qualify as wrong, they define as "normal, and just fine." All in all, I'm not very impressed with the movie. It also casts a very dark and fuzzy shadow on the civil war, casting out as a very different kind of war. Not a "family movie night" movie, by a long shot.
        Ok, onto the second movie. "Secretariat".
        It has a much better after-taste in your mind than TGTB&TU. Its based on a true story of a horse, the title being his name, starting from nothing and winning massive awards and setting times nobody thought he ever could. There is a very hard driving theme of "keep striving" all through it, when faced with losing her farm and her horse, Penny, the main character, played by Diane Lane, says she will not back down to pressure and keep going. (At least thats the gist of it) However, there is an interesting line or two that caught my attention. She was saying they will not live the rest of their lives in regret, and they will see the horse race, and he will win, and they will rejoice every day. That's what caught me. Rejoice every day why? Because a horse won a hunk of metal and ran around a dirt circle faster than anybody else? This shows a definite worldview. In fact, the movie is loaded with off worldview. It is loaded with feministic idea's, the wife being the hero of the movie, constantly praising the "strong woman", never in word but in typical cinema-graphical medium. She is showed as heroic for leaving her home time and time again, putting her family on the back-burner, so she can go to her races, and take care of the farm in Va, etc, and is praised for being tough by toughing all of life's challenges and making it all the way to Belmont. She does all of what she does in the movie to see the horse win, to give it a chance she never had, she says. She says she gave up her life out of college to be a housewife, and now she wants to give her life to get this horse in the racing world. As far as racing goes, it is absolutely stunning what that magnificent creature of God did, that no other creature could do. It said in a special feature on the dvd, that after he died and they did an autopsy, he had a heart twice the size of what he should. An incredible creature with and incredible story. The movie has humor as well, the colorful trainer, and his WEIRD choice of clothes and hats, and spouting french when he's upset or angry, and his unforgettable attempt to golf, the indestructible jockey, who probably doesn't top 5'3", who, upon first seeing him, is bruised, got lines where his racing goggles were, is on crutches, and is raring to go on the next race, and other things here and there that are quite funny to behold.
        All in all, not a bad movie, very well done cinema-graphicly and actor wise. Requires some discernment to pick out the worldview hints, but if you can pick out the good, and ignore the bad, its well worth it.
        Since I hardly ever see secular movies, I'll probably comment on most of them that I do see, Stay tuned. :)