My dreams

*I want to make a boat. Not just a normal boat, but I want to chop down a huge tree and just hallow it out. Then it is off to a river to see if it works… pray for me…

*One summer I want to just go. Go anywhere and everywhere like the disciples did. No money, no phone (maybe), no nothing, well maybe a backpack. I would like to do this with one other person (Kevin if he is down). I don’t know where all this would take me, but it would be great to just have to trust God to provide everything.

*Maybe run a marathon, but that is so over used…

*I would like to read the whole Bible, I know I will someday but I can’t wait for that day… or all the days in between.

*I want to have a party. Not just a normal party, but a huge worship party in buffalo. With anyone who wants to go. I would pass out flyers to homeless shelters and stuff to make sure that everyone knows about it. I want to have a band play for hours upon hours. Just worshiping with everyone. I want to pass an offering plate around. But this one would be different. If people felt lead to put money in it then they could, and if people felt lead to take from in it then they could.

This is not all, but its what I could think of for now. If I think of anymore I will write them down

A love beyond belief

I’m not sure if I can ever understand love. It is just so tough to grasp, and heck I think it is impossible to truly grasp the whole idea or concept, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
So probably almost everyone had heard this verse about love. It is very popular at weddings and this verse is almost over used. But I got told to switch the word love out with my name to see if I am really love. Since God is love and we want to be like God we also must want to be like love. So anyway I felt like a huge liar while saying this to myself. “Brendan is patient; Brendan is kind…” well that is just a total lie. I hate it. I want to be like love but heck I can’t even do these first two things to be like love. I guess it is my goal over my life to be seen as love and one day fit this definition of love.
One other thing I was thinking about is how much trouble I have accepting the cross sometimes. I feel terrible after I screw up somehow (which happens all the time). I feel like a failure to God. I feel like I start to lose my touch with God. Everything seems so much harder then. I just don’t want to read or pray or think about God, I just want to be a failure on my own. But when I do finally decide to run back to God I have trouble. I can’t forgive myself, and if I do I still feel like a wall is separating me from God.
But if I just remember the cross and what He did for me I shouldn’t feel this wall anymore… So again I was thinking about all this stuff and I was thinking about the cross and then I was thinking about all the stuff that Christ had to go through. He got beaten, whipped, and nailed to a cross. Nails broke through His bones and then He was left hanging their until He died. Now He did not have to go through this. He had the option to do this for us. But He had no one their to comfort Him. That is the difference between what we have to go through and what He had to go through. He is always there for us, but we weren’t there for Him. How did he get have the courage to make it through all that pain on his own? Everything we feel I believe is dulled down because He is there for us no matter what, but He had to feel all this pain at full force, with no one beside Him.

seriously…

So a good friend of mine told me I haven’t blogged in a while so I figured I should, not a very good reason but whatever. So last night my dad was picking on me; it is just something my family does. We pick on the younger kids, typically between the ages of 14-20 I’ve observed. So anyway my dad was picking on me and I don’t really even remember for what, but I know I wasn’t too happy about it. I started to get aggravated so my solution was to just ignore my dad. Then he said something to me that sorta hit me and made me think. It was like one of those moments when time stops and you realize something. But anyway he said “don’t take life too seriously” and at first I agreed with him and said “I’m not…” but as I was saying that I realized what the heck is wrong with taking life seriously? I think it is a big lie that someone came up with when they thought of that stupid quote. How should people take life then? As a big joke? No where the heck does that get you? And also if we don’t take life seriously we are all just going to go to hell because we never cared enough to take this gift God gave us seriously. I am not saying that we shouldn’t have fun and joke around and all, but we do need to take life seriously because it is all we got. It is our one chance.

AMAZING

I have trouble putting words to certain things, and Joshua Rev is one of those things. Four days I stood and worshiped with thousands of people, crying out to God to pour His spirit down upon us. I loved it, every minute of it. I would just close my eyes and sing, even if my voice is not pleasent to my ear or anyone else’s, it is still beautiful to God.
We would stand and sing, dance, yell, clap, cry, all to God. I would stand there thinking how amazing this all was. How beautiful to God. Thousands of people calling to God, praising His name. The joy that must have come to Him. It is said that when one person gets saved all of heaven rejoices. What happens when hundreds of kids get saved, give their lives to God? What would heaven look like then? What kind of happiness and love would God be feeling?
So like I said, I would stand and stare at all these people while we worshiped together. And just think about the potental and beauty of these people. Tons of people trying to live for God, struggling to live for God; but still trying. And if we all tried we could start something amazing, something good and right. We could make a difference with a group like that; and we will make a difference. God told me I am going to be a leader for Him. I am going to do something for Him, He has a plan for me. I don’t know what or how or where but somehow I am going to make a difference for Him.
He is AMAZING… what more can I say…

today

Everyone makes plans, everyone has plans, but the problem is plans change. How often do our lives go according to our plan? For me not too often, I’m starting to realize I’m not the one in control. So really who is to say that I am going to live another day. And I know I’ve said this before and it is so easy to say and not live out, but we could die at any moment.
So the dude who wrote Crazy Love trys to find his purpose everyday. Not just his purpose in life, like his job, or something like that. But his purpose for that day. Everyday he does this. I know myself I always hold God off for the next day. I say to God, o I’ll read that tomorrow, or I can do that later, but the truth is I may not have later on in my life. Anyway so I started to try to find the reason for my day yesterday. I couldn’t find it in school, nor in practice. I just could not find the purpose of my day, I wanted something amazing to happen. I wanted to do something for God for once. I thought I gave that day to Him, but I still could not find a purpose.
So christmas is right around the corner and I haven’t bought any gifts yet, as of yesterday. So I went to walmart (which I do not really support but sadly find myself going there still) and I could not find anything I wanted. I was already pissed because I gained too much weight for wrestling already over christmas break and break hasn’t even strated. So I was really down on myself, fat, and christmas giftless. O and I couldn’t find my purpose when I was really trying to find one. Now I am not one to cry, I go to youth confrences and I want to cry but I can’t. For some reason I started crying though yesterday on the way home from walmart. I was so sad i couldn’t find my purpose for the day, I just felt like a failure.
As the night was almost over I picked up my Blue Like Jazz book to read before I went to bed. Then I realzed my purpose in the day was to give my coach a copy of the book.I had promised to give him one months ago but never got around to doing it. I knew this book could possibly change His life to, but I just didn’t really care much, because I’m a loser. I had already done what God had wanted for the day but I just never realized it. Now I think it is sorta funny how things work out. I was trying so hard to find my purpose while I actually had done what I needed to do without realizing it.
So my story is not amazing or anything, but what I want to say is to try and find your purpose day to day. And if you can not find it don’t get down on yourself because somethimes we do what God wants without realizing it… its rare but sometimes we do things right.

What went wrong

What happend to this world? Why is there so much pain and hurt? How can I help all of these problems? What am I to do?
Every once in a while we expose something terrible in the world. May that be sweatshops, or protitution or whatever, it doesn’t really matter. The things is we are only exposing it. Sure you have to start somewhere, but how did this happen in the first place and what are we doing to try to fix it? Exposing it will only go so far. You can tell everyone in the world about something and how to change it, but that does not mean anyone is going to give a crap to change it.
Why is this? Is it because we lost our hearts, our morals, we solely care about ourselves. And I find it so ironic that we care so much about ourselves, but we get the most joy by helping others. I just don’t understand our world. So where did our morals go, and why shouldn’t they be in our government? Yes I understand to seperate religion and state, but I also believe that deep inside we have morals that are presented in Christianity. I am not saying Christianity is 100% perfect because it isn’t; but the God of Christianity is… He engraved these morals on in our hearts, we know what is right and wrong. We can feel it inside of us. Now we just need to do something about it…
But that is the other problem, we are lazy, hell I’m lazy. I talk about sweatshops and all this crap, but I still want to shop a walmart. The other day I bought a christmas gift for a friend at walmart, I could have easily bought it from a local store but I was already at walmart so I decided why not. All I am trying to say is we are too lazy to care, or maybe it is that we don’t want to care because the truth scares us. You tell me which one it is because I truely do not know…

so here it is…

I haven’t blogged in forever and someone in particular has been bugging me about it… so here it is (hence the title).

We are reading this book in small group called Crazy Love. I have only read the first chapter so far and I was barely awake when I read it, but I still got something out of it; surprisingly. So all my life I have been asking God for this, and for that. Asking Him for my own personal benifits and sometimes when I feel genorious I even pray for others. I am the perfect “Christian” doing everything God wants me to do, and in return God answers my prayers and pleases me… Too bad that isn’t true. But anyway, I am always asking asking asking as if God is here to please me. I always thought this, never thought it was wrong. Untill this book said that God created us to please Him… Not the other way around. Now this is just crazy to me. I have been living my life totally wrong, and heck I thought I was a pretty good “christian”.
So I am pretty much here to please this amazingly huge God. Then this dude starts talking about how amazing God looks. Now not too many people have seen and the people who have gotten a chance have turned away in fear that they would die… pretty crazy if you ask me. So their are two accounts of seeing God in his glory. They describe Him as gem or diamonds, something like that, but they couldn’t put words to it. I guess the sight of Him does not even compare to the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen. I have trouble wrapping my mind around this, but I am happy I can’t wrap this idea up totally because then it losses its mystery and beauty.
So back to my point here, God is this beautiful all powerful, amazingly huge thing… He created us, He is not efffected by time, He is everywhere at once. He is amazing. But He had a choice, He could have been a bully. I myself am 112lbs on a good day (wrestling weight) and I have always been a tiny sorta kid. I was never really bullied around, but I never had a chance to be a bully since I was always the shortest in my class. But God; God has a different story, He could have bullied the crap out of us. He could snap His fingers and we could all be gone (the flood). But He chooses not to, instead He loves us. He LOVES US… Why? All I have ever done is ask ask ask, but He still loves me. All I have ever done is spat in His face time after time, ignored Him, and crusified Him. But He still loves me… I know this is a stupid saying, but honestly He loves you to… I don’t know why because I know your a terrible person just like me (lol) but He still loves you.

So here it is, thats my blog, I hope your happy Kim, not to mention any names…

Eye For An Eye?

“An eye for and eye makes the whole world blind”-Brendan Omicioli. Just kidding, -Gandi. As humans it is so hard for us to graps this idea. We think that punishment will lead to something better, that punishment may even lead to peace. Well sorry to break the news to you, but the history of the world shows it does not. Just look around you, look at the war, look at your life even.
Today in English class we talked about flogging people instead of throwing them in prision. What a great idea, some people thought. Well I just can not agree with them at all. Sure they will be humiliated and have scars, but won’t that make people want to kill or steal or whatever even more. These scars would remind me how much society hate me, thinks I’m worthless, or even better then me.
Now I said that in some case the victums family sometimes take the murder, or rapist, or whatever in. They forgive him, show him love, and try to help them in any way they can. Now this takes a lot of balls to do this, and it is every rare to hear about, but it does happen. And when they do this people change. People do not change because they are told it is wrong. They change because they figured out that it is wrong. They would change because of love.
Now if we can think this is an acceptable idea at such a high level then why the heck should we even consider this loving eachother in our everyday lives. I believe when situations get elevated to such a high level people tend to see the truth because they search really hard for it. (That probably does not make sense but just go with me here). So if we think that flogging is ok, or acceptable on such a high level then what about our everyday experiences and choices we do not really think about. Does it just come natural to hate.
I am not sure exactly what I am trying to say, but I know we need to love and not hate. And if we can’t even love in elevated situations when it should come naturally then why would we even love in simple ones.

lost

Lately I’ve felt like crap. I’m lost, and I have not intention to be found. I am sick of God. I want to read abbout Him and engulf myself in Him, but I’m just not really in the mood.
Life has been tough the past few days for no reason. Nothing bad has really happend, I am sorta just getting stressed out on life. I want this week to pass. I want states to be over with. I don’t want to worry about wrestling. And I don’t want to give a speech at the legion today. I have to talk about Boys State. Now, Boys State made me realize how much I dislike the military and government. I just think they are just a bunch of brainwashed robots. I need to get away from this idea, it is only affecting how I see people. I need to love people, not hate them for what they do.
I am just sick of life. I want to fight God for no reason. I want to lose. I want to feel Him like I did before. I want to stop running away from Him.

Thanks

Sometimes little things can make or break my day. Just a smile or a hi. Maybe even a “top of the mornin”, it happens. And I love when this happens when I do not expect it. It all makes me so happy. So thank you everyone who has ever said hi to me when I seemed said or even just waved. It all means so much more to me then you will realize. So gracias everyone =]