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tetra4
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Name: James
Country: United States
State: Illinois
Metro: Carbondale
Birthday: 4/26/1984
Gender: Male
Interests: Bible study, my major: Electronic Systems Technologies (although I am starting to be weary of technology), analysis of situations with people, getting to know people honestly
Expertise: None apart from Christ Jesus. He seems to have given me gifts of wisdom and counseling, even though I have trouble dealing with situations I, myself counsel and help people in.
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/22/2005
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| A weekend that may define the next few years of my lifeWow... a second entry... in less than a month, even!
Well, I just got back from a busy weekend.
Friday I visited Lincoln Christian Seminary. It was nice. Between the college and seminary, the largest classroom could only support 60 people. Also, a class is only once a week for 2.5 hours. I was able to meet 4 of the 12 professors in the seminary and talk to them about my goals and where I might want to go later on down the road, and had lunch with one of them.
I also found out that I could enter earlier than I had expected: the spring. Before, I thought I'd have to wait until the fall to start, but I was wrong.
Everyone there was nice and all of the professors seemed extremely accessible- there's only a 12:1 student:instructor ratio within the seminary!
They also tried to get me to consider the masters in divinity- the biggest masters in ministry that exists. It looks like it'd be fun, but I want to be able to get out and work more quickly than that- call it impatience.
On Saturday, I met with Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach's Director and Logistics/Warehouse Coordinator. Hospital Sisters is a Franciscan (catholic) group that has 14 hospitals in Illinois and Wisconsin. They also run Mission Outreach.
Mission Outreach is an agency that collects medical supplies and old equipment. They sort the supplies and refurbish the medical equipment and send them overseas to Haiti, many places in Africa, and other places in need(the director is leaving for kenya and other African countries on Tuesday for 3 weeks). They just built a new 13,800 sq. ft. warehouse that can hold only 3 months of collected supplies (they have 5 months worth right now). Their greatest bottleneck is the fact that they only have 1 volunteer Biomedical Electronics Technician to fix up all of the equipment they are collecting.
I was contacted by them through my father (they tried to recruit him, but he was too busy with another non-profit) and found out that they want me to not only help with refurbishing equipment, but also with improving their whole organization and setting up an operation in Carbondale. Since there's a program for fixing medical equipment here (my program), they can see about getting an army of volunteers and another warehouse.
My "interview" was more of a "recruitment speech". After talking to me, they told me that whenever they needed someone, they just "appeared out of nowhere" (obviously God's work). They believe that I am someone that can help them go to the next level- something that is now easily done with a few tweaks here and there that I have experience making elsewhere.
They also told me that they would be talking to the Sisters to see if they could set up a paid internship so that I could concentrate on their group rather than having to spend time elsewhere finding a part-time job while I was at seminary.
Right now it looks like I'll be leaving SIU and Carbondale at the end of the semester for LCCS and Springfield. I'll be missing everyone here... believe me... you're all family to me. If I can spare a weekend.... believe me... I'll be down.
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| An actual update... and some developmentsWow... 6 months since I was on here last. Since, though, almost everyone who has a subscription to my blog sees me everyday, I'll just post what they may or may not know.
Lately, I've been really taking a hard look at my life. It started when my girlfriend (Stacey) and I broke up a few weeks ago. After this, I started searching and praying. I found this quote in Stacey's AIM profile soon after:
"A woman should be so hidden in Christ that a man must seek Him to find
her."
This quote really got me thinking... at the time, I didn't quite understand it fully, but I kept on thinking about it.
A week later, on Sunday morning as soon as I woke up, I felt a strong need to seek God more. I couldn't explain why it came on so suddenly, except by God. In church, my pastor taught on the letter to the Sardis church in Revalation.
"...I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead...."
"...for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God."
These two statements were like a dagger into my heart.
The last couple of years, I've been a passive Christian. Sure, I've been involved in ministry and have impacted many people's lives directly and indirectly, but I lost my yearning for Him. I have not truely seeked (grammar, anyone?) him with my lifestyle since my freshman year. Whenever I get presented with a hard situation which I don't instinctually know what to do, I run away. If I can't run away, I end up being completely ineffective in what I am doing.
This call on my life has very much impacted me and I'm starting anew. I've restarted discipleship- and this time it's for good reasons. The last time it was because it was the "logical next step". I didn't devote myself to it and I really didn't have the desire to be within it.
My own Spiritual growth has been stunted for far too long. God even stopped speaking to me because I wouldn't listen. Since I made the decision to seek, God has presented several opportunities to me, few of which I've said no to. I've grown more in the past week than I can remember in the past year.
God is Good
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| it's been a long timeWell, it's been a long time since I posted. I guess I'll post.
Recently, I've been thinking about why exactly I have a fear to "cut
loose". By cut loose, I mean relax and do things like go out
dancing or sports or anything like that within a group. I may
have figured out one reason.
It may sound strange, but every time I've "cut loose" and done these
things, I have a way of changing my personality and becoming what many
may consider a "jerk". In sports, when I've actually gotten into
them, my mind is so set on the objective, I seem to not care about what
happens to those around me. If there's a person in front of me in
any contact sport, I'll just run over them, not caring what
happens. If I'm doing something like dancing, I just seem to
loose control of my mind and I do and say insensitive stuff that I
would normally never do, since normally I am double-checking myself for
the most part. In general, the more free I feel, the more
"jerkish" I become. I see this as my "hyde" side and I don't want
it to come forth and hurt others.
If anyone has any thoughts on this, let me know, because I have no idea what to do or where to go with this.
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| Please pray for me... I've been having trouble breathing the last few
days. It could be a physical issue, but it could also be stress
from many different things that have happened the last week or
so. This next week is going to be especially hard, especially
because of a certain day that's happening pretty soon.
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| I know that this wasn't very well-written grammatically or organizationally, but please, bear with me- I have a headache.
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Frankly, I'm tired of Christian guys talking about "practical" ways to
stop sinning, namely in the areas of pornography and
masturbation. (I have to admit that in the past I've had some
problems with porno) Actually, my biggest sin problem is in the area of computer
games. You may be laughing right now, but I become so obsessed
that all of my relationships start taking a back seat to it. I
don't get any homework or any other work done, and when I'm not in
front of the screen, all I'm thinking about is the next time I'm going
to be in front of the screen.
I'm tired of guys talking about ways to stop sinning. The reason
is, is that these types of sins (maybe all sins, in fact) are your
flesh trying to fill a hole in your life. It may seem to fill a
hole in your life when you're doing it, but afterwards, the hole is
emptier than when you started. Even if you stop sinning in these
ways, that hole is still empty.
How about we start talking, not about how to stop sinning, but how to
make it so that we don't have to sin to fill that hole? How, you
ask do we do that? We have to fill that hole with what it was meant
to be filled with. God. If you fill that hole with
the Holy Spirit and the Word, then your flesh will have no reason to
want anything else, since it has what it was originally designed for.
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