Art Katz Quote

“We are too swept up in the culture of our day, finding the entertainment, the methods, the psychology, and the wisdom of our age more enlightened and engrossing than the crude insistence on radical purging and cleansing. We have turned away from the priestly thing of sacrfice and blood. It is another way of saying that we have turned away from ‘the offense of the Cross.’ “

Art Katz

For FIRE or BRSM students (grads in particular)

This kind of flows out of my last blog I wrote, and pertains to myself and I definitely hope other grads read it, because I’m noticing some differences in our lives outside of the FIRE community as opposed to when we were in it.

This past week I’ve watched a lot of TV at my grandparents’. Not anything overtly sinful, but the quantity of time I spent watching TV was more than how much time I spent with the Lord on good days.
I remember in the 8 months away from FIRE working a full time job how gradually I became more and more comfortable watching TV or movies, and standards I held as to what I’d allow into my system got lowered more and more as time went on. Then one thing that’s undeniable is that I’d find it harder to pray or read the Bible, and I’d rather go see what’s on TV or go to Blockbuster Video. This was a far stretch from in Pensacola where you’d pray in tongues for hours a day, and people might think less of you if you own a TV let alone if you have channels on it. I remember my first place I lived in Pensacola, being an international student and not being able to work, I remember my roomate/landlord insisting he didn’t want a TV because it wastes so much time, and though I agreed with him, it was still shocking to me because I’d spent so much time a day that I didn’t realize was a waste. And that semester in 2001, I was reading the Bible hours a day, and when I got baptized in the Holy Spirit I was praying in tongues hours and hours on the weekends. I stayed in Pensacola over the Christmas break that year, and even disconnected the internet to my laptop so it wouldn’t distract me from spending time with Jesus. I mean, I really got myself detoxed as far as TV goes. Dont’ get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with TV, but it definitely is a modern day idol dare I say. I was becoming less and less familiar with anything going on in all the TV shows I used to watch.

It was May of 2002 that I came home, and I sat in front of my parents’ TV, with digital cable for the first time in 9 months. I felt so defiled and what I watched was a comedy show, but there was humor I didn’t share. Then that night I changed the channel and saw in 10 seconds a murder take place in some kind of what I perceived to be a horror movie. I went to bed that night thinking I’d throw up and being so scared that I defiled the purity I had in my heart. But through whatever series of events I went through, I was gradually back to watching TV a lot again by the end of that summer. In the fall I couldn’t get across the border, and I found myself spending an entire week in September of that year without reading the Bible a single page in a day, and watching the kind of stuff spiritual people wouldn’t. And at one point eventually I forsook it again, and realized the slippery slope I had fallen back down on.

Now you may be wondering what is so wrong with watching TV, and I respond like Paul and say “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial to me.” I know Christians who will die if they miss an episode of their favorite TV show, but have no problem sleeping in on sunday if they feel like it and missing church. I know for a fact, that when you’re pumping yourself so full of the garbage of this world, it influences you, and as those of you remember Brian Parkman saying, whatever you expose your soul to, it will adapt to. And I don’t want the spirit of this age shaping me, but I want the purity of the Holy Ghost’s influence to make me more like Jesus.

I don’t have a problem with people watching TV per se. But I notice in my life the desensitizing effect it had on my spiritual senses. I seemed to have a harder time hearing the voice of God, and I operated less and less in faith, words of knowledge, and believing I could heal with the laying on of my hands on people. My favorite thing about FIRE when I’ve been there has not been the atmosphere specifically, but the fact I don’t own a TV in any of the living arrangments I’ve had, and therefore had no choice but to find other things to do with my time. And I struggled with reading everything there is to read on the internet instead. So any situation can become a vice if we don’t watch our heart. I know Christians who play video games and shrug at you if you point out the ridiculous amount of violence and bloodshed taking place in it. As for those shoot ‘em up games, doesn’t God say in the Bible thou shall not kill? Does it have to be specifically in real life or does it apply to a fantasy world? And what are we doing going to the entertainment world, the internet, video games, movies to relieve stress for anyway? Is God not good enough?
For those of you who are getting really mad at me reading this, how much time do you spend in prayer a day and how much time do you spend watching TV a day? How much time do you spend reading, studying or meditating the Word of God? Is He pleased with the kind of stuff you willingly and in some cases PAY to watch?

I’ve noticed in my life not just the desensitizing that takes place, but the lack of confidence I have in the effect I can have with the power of the Gospel. I remember sitting around one afternoon and my friend came by wanting me to go with him to lay hands on someone really sick that he knew, and my confidence level was very low–why? Because I knew how full of the world I was from sitting around on my butt instead of on my knees. I knew how full of the world I was instead of full of the Holy Ghost and I was afraid nothing would happen as a result. Now don’t get me wrong it is entirely God who does things through us, and not us working ourselves up to a place of being “right enough” that He will flow through us, but there definitely is a posture before God I’d like to have and I don’t get that way from watching hours of TV. And it’s not even necessarily the quantity of what I watch. You can defile yourself in moments with filth on TV.

I had a roomate in a living arrangement who’d watch a specific soap opera every day. I had another roomate another time and place who’d watch ridiculously violent action movies.
Let me ask you a few questions if there’s nothing wrong with TV:
-Is it ok to cuss, fornicate, take the Lord’s name in vain, or murder someone in real life? Does that make it ok to watch someone else do it on TV?
-Does what you’re watching get you closer to God, or do you have less confidence about getting in the prayer closet or in the Word as a result of watching it?
-Can you pray in tongues for an hour, and then watch that TV show or movie without feeling convicted or stuff wrong in your spirit?
-Can you watch that show or movie first and THEN pray in tongues for an hour without feeling anything’s wrong?

At any rate, this is based on stuff I’m going through, and pose it as questions for people I know watch more TV than I do and watch stuff I’d never watch. If these thoughts are good enough to change my life, why not share them and see if it might impart life to other people who’ve come up out of the same atmosphere as I have. What you let in influences you and I’m tired of trying to muster something up in the Spirit if I haven’t been living a clean enough life that the Spirit would flow through me. For those of you who’ve heard me mention shows I watch and thought “how could you call yourself a Christian and watch that?” even though ‘clean’ as they may be, I’m revamping my schedule, and making this stuff disapear that I may be wine poured out for the people around me.

Steve

Deserving

“The man who seriously is convinced that he deserves to go to hell is not likely to go there, while the man who believes he is worthy of heaven will certainly never enter that blessed place.”

A.W. Tozer

Backsliding is stupid

People never have a good enough excuse to backslide. What is a good enough excuse? THERE IS NONE!!!!

I’m getting pretty annoyed to hear of former grads or students from either BRSM or FIRE not walking with the Lord anymore. And now that I’m back home in Canada I’m pretty annoyed to hear the latest about who are living in some kind of public sin. What do I mean by public? I don’t mean the personal struggles that people try to overcome–by public I mean they that won’t deal with something in their lives that everyone, both believer and unbeliever can see in their lives and it stinks up their nostrils—as well as God’s.
You may not like the tone of this entry and think I’m being too critical, but before getting upset with me, ask yourself if there’s sin in your own life you’re not dealing with or if you’ve backslidden in your heart towards the Lord and therefore words like this are just convicting you. I don’t pretend this is an anointed writing either, I’m just spilling forth my own thoughts and frustrations.

I won’t mention any names, but if you read this and you know I’m talking about you, then deal with it. I know a few people really close and personally who’ve gotten to go to Pensacola during the revival in 1995-2000, as well, I know some people who’ve attended the school as well as FIRE, or graduated from one of these atmospheres, now living in sin, or blatantly away from God as if He never touched their lives. I know a brother who got offended that some people at school never thought of inviting him to a prayer meeting, and so he eventually stopped attending school and the church under the guise of “not fitting in anymore”, and turned his back completely on God over this offense. I know another person who comes from an amazingly committed family of the most on fire adults to ever pour into my life outside of the FIRE atmosphere, and this brother wades his way in and out of the world on a pretty frequent basis, and is in a carnal state of spirituality the last I talked to him.

How is it that people could have such great things going for them, and STILL be ungrateful towards Jesus who saved them from everything they deserve to be dealt? I never got to go to the revival in Pensacola! I never came from a Spirit-filled on fire family that prayed together and moved heaven like some of these brothers and sisters who are too selfish to realize what they’ve got and how much the Lord has done for them! Again, I’m venting my own frustrations. If you are struggling with sin, there’s enough power in the grace of God to forsake it and be the over comer, by the blood of Jesus and the power of the Holy Ghost in your life to bury that vice or sin or struggle for good. But I’m talking about them that choose not to, I’m talking about them who know better. What lie from the pit of hell do people believe that makes them think they’ve got a good enough case to turn from God? What do these people think God owes them? Have they become so selfish they think they have a right to revolt against their one and only true master and friend?

I got saved in March of 1997, and have never turned back and never looked back since. I don’t have a bunch of vices like drugs, alcohol or sex partners in my past that I’m tempted to go back to. So what the heck would I go back to if I wanted? I relate to the disciples whom Jesus asked if they wanted to turn away from him to which they answered, but where will we go? Sure I’ve had battles with sin in the initial years of my salvation, and I look back now and wonder how God was ever using me when I had such crap in my life that wasn’t repented of. But God is wonderful, He is gracious, and will complete the work He began.

So what is it that makes people give up on this grace? If there’s nothing we could have done in the first place to make ourselves right with Him other than accepting His provision, than what on earth could NOT be good enough about it after that?!?!?! Ask yourself, backslider if that’s who’s reading this? What is in your heart, do you hate Jesus? Was what he did not good enough for you? Are you forsaking delicacies of the kingdom in order to eat the vomit of this world? May I submit to you for your consideration it takes a revoltingly sick type of selfishness, and ungratefulness to think you have reason to turn your back on God.

Please reconsider your lifestyle if this pertains to you and ask God to shine His light on what the problem is, because I guarantee you the problem is not God.

Chords of eternity

“Every step you take, you tread on chords that will vibrate to all eternity. Every time you move, you touch keys whose sound will echo through the hills and dales of heaven and through the dark corners and vaults of hell. Every moment of your lives you are ex’erting a tremendous influence that will tell on the immortal interests of souls all around you.”

Charles Finney

Influences

This entry is testimony that I have gotten Word working on my computer. This may not mean much to most, but I prefer writing blog entries as they come to me, without having to wait until the next time I’m online.
What’s interesting, is how when you don’t have access to the internet or have the time to write the entries, you feel like you’re bursting at the seams with stuff you want to post, but then when you’re presented with the opportunity, suddenly you no longer have much to write.

Some of the thoughts floating around my mind have to do with how much people influenced me for good or for bad. Like today my day was basically ruined and a burden put on me by someone else’s bad mood and crappy attitude. When I even said something to them, they’d blow up more. And then the thing they were upset indirectly towards me about turned out to be their fault not mine. But the hours after the situation occurred, it just floored me and I am amazed at how much some things can impact us. So to anyone reading this that I’ve been careless with my words to or hurt no matter how minor or just in passing, I apologize. The last thing I want to do is ruin anyone’s day. I’m not writing this post to get anything off my chest, it’s just an aside that I realize I can hurt with my tongue without realizing it.

But I don’t like writing negative entries. If I vent I want to also provide some kind of solution, which is what this blog is supposed to be for me –sure I’ll write “how my day was” journals, but for the most part I want to provoke and stir people up in a good way.
I heard Curry Blake say “provoke” literally means to make people so mad that they go do something about it, and that’s the kind of idea I have in mind writing these entries.

Also, to flow back into my thoughts on how people influence for good or bad. Though I’d love to broadcast to the blogging world how much people have made an impact on me, I also am careful to be vague sometimes, and usually anonymous in what I write about on here, since I never know how people would feel if I write about them, good or bad.
In fact, it really gets on my nerves to read blogs by other Christians who blatantly talk trash about people behind their backs, on *their blogs!*. I don’t want to go too far down a rabbit trail by saying this, but if anyone reading this thinks I’m talking about them, then deal with it where appropriate, but it amazes me that some people I read blogs by consistently will trash people and talk about how much better they are than everyone else, and it just wreaks of arrogance. I vow never to have anyone feeling I’m doing that about them on this. If I have something to say to people they hear it from me personally in real life, not on the internet for everyone else to read about. But anyway, moving along.

The last day or two I’ve been really reflecting back on a time of my life I went through nearly two years ago when I was stuck in Canada, and things didn’t go nearly as I hoped and I never got to go back to FIRE right away, and how much I had one friend in particular being a tremendous source of encouragement to me. Though we had a falling out that this friend has since rectified with me that had resolved a year and a half of not speaking, I still always was able to relate back to the positive about that season of my life, and remember the encouragement, joy and sense of confidence in my relationship with God that this person brought by being in my life. A few months of blessed encouragement and just all around being there for me made more of an impression on me than not speaking to me over issues that have mostly been resolved.

It boggles my mind, but makes me feel totally comfortable that I’m in God’s hands, and He knows perfectly well when to introduce people into and out of our lives for the influence that He knows they’ll have and He handpicks them for the specific purposes and times that He does, knowing what impact they’ll have on us.

Another person just told me last time I saw them in North Carolina that normally whenever they were at school or a church service and had anything heavy hanging on their heart, that I was usually the person that would say something funny or light-hearted to cheer him up without even knowing it. You have no idea how that floored me, because that was an example of being careless with my words in a good way that brought life to someone.
But then again I can relate, because I remember one time in my second semester of school, during the first week of it, that I was not wanting to be there, and wanted to leave because I was hurt bad by two people, a friend backstabbing me, the other being a sister in the Lord I had really fallen for, but who not only didn’t feel the same way back, and decided not to speak to me ever again (so it was at the time). And I remember leaving the chapel service that day and walking back and forth down the hallway at New Hope, and I bumped into another classmate. Don’t get me wrong, this girl is not hard to look at by any means, but when she walked by, she gave me a smile and said hi, and that impacted me in such a positive way that I now understood those what I thought were lame sayings about never having any idea how much a smile could bless someone. But this particular instance made my day! And I always remembered it, and it always remained in my memory about this person, and I’m sure everyone that ever comes in contact with her walk away with their day made too, just because of her smile.

At any rate, I don’t know how to sum all that up, but it has to do with how much our words, actions and just all around impressions we leave on people, can really make a world of difference on people sometimes without them even knowing it. For good and for bad.

Steve out.

Computers and blogging and other such stuff.

Hey there.

Well, I might wind up blogging less often than I thought, my dear friends and other complete strangers who read these entries.

Just last night I went to start up my laptop after having it turned off and plugged into the wall while I was in Brantford. When I started the laptop up, the screen was all fuzzy, and there was this weird cackling noise. I thought that was odd, and tried turning it off and restarting it a few times and still the fuzzy screen would appear, and I was now beginning to smell something weird. I tilted my computer to look at the connections where the monitor is attached to the keyboard since mine is fragile and gradually cracking all around the edges, and I could see sparks in the right hand side, and then poof–it caught fire! I freaked out a little bit because there’s no reason to my knowledge why it would be damaged and do that, so I blew it out like a candle, turned the thing off and took it upstairs and explained to my dad what happened, and he took the battery out and told me to try again and be careful and watch it, and so on. Then it turned on no problem. Man. So I’m using it kind of sparingly and not leaving it running or plugged in when I’m not using it.

Also, the other setback, besides the letter “L” not working and you have to press hard on a certain angle that wears on your finger after pressing it a lot–is that now my computer won’t recognize my Microsoft Office programs. I was not using my laptop online during the last trimester of school, but I’d plug my flash card reader for my digital camera into it, and write blogs on my laptop and then plug the memory card I was using into my roomate’s computer and paste them onto Blogger and put them online. That’s how come some of my entries are so long–I’d work on them in more than one sitting and then put them together, then paste them online.

Well, when I plugged my laptop into my dad’s ethernet for the first time in over four months once I got back to Canada, the number of updates there were to download from Windows was insane, and once I finally finished installing them, none of my Windows Office XP programs would work without asking me to insert the original disc into my CD rom. So my dad can’t find it anywhere, so now all sorts of programs that use Microsoft frontpage won’t work properly as a result, and blogs/sermon ideas I’d been working on are being held hostage on my computer and won’t open until this problem is fixed. So this is a big hindrance to the method of which I’d been writing blogs.

Which is unfortunate because I had been working on an entry on the thorn in Paul’s flesh and how contextually it has nothing to do with sickness and disease like popularly taught. But this would be a far second to the word God was putting in me about the David and Goliath passage, and the methods of fighting our Goliath society/culture around us. Most of my work on it is already done as a Word document that I can no longer access. So for those of you who’ve been reading and you remember me mentioning a few times several weeks back to look for it and were wondering where it is, this is why it hasn’t been posted yet.

Well, that is about all I have the time or patience to write for now. Soon something will turn up.

Update on the fund raising:
I have roughly half of what I need in order to go for six months. So if you’d please pray for the finances to come in for March/April roughly, and/or for God to enlighten me with more marketable ideas like He did with the Ten Commandment Penny Bracelets, then please do. Anyone reading this that would like to make a tax deductible donation, just contact me for info on how, or if you’d like to “not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” and give anonymously, then in Canada click here, and in America click here.

Otherwise, be blessed one and all alike.

Steve

The man with an experience

“A man with an experience of God is never at the mercy of a man with an argument, for an experience of God that costs something is worth something, and does something.”

Leonard Ravenhill