Humble Yourself Like A Child

    I began to study the New Testament as a child for the first time while on my mission. The reason it was important to approach it as a child was because I had all these pre-conceived notions and beliefs that didn’t leave any room for learning. It was like I had a full cup and was trying to dump more in but it just poured down the sides and was lost. I emptied the cup of all the LDS Church’s, Prophet’s, all my leaders’ interpretations and my own as well and humbled myself to God’s Word and told God that I wanted to know His truth from His Word, no matter what that meant for me, no matter if I had been wrong all my life, I just wanted to know God’s Truth. I learned that the Bible interprets itself and I decided not to fill in the gaps and just trust it as it’s written. Just like Jesus said in Matt. 18:3-4, unless I changed and humbled myself like a child I would never enter the kingdom of heaven.

    The Bible verse that hit me the hardest was Matt. 24:12 where Jesus says “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” I had never really looked at myself in the sense that I was exalting myself, but when I read that I suddenly realized that I was. It was so hard for me to keep myself humble as a Mormon male, especially as a missionary. Those two years you are seriously treated like gods. When my companion and I would walk into a Ward building the members would flock to us as if we were movie stars and when we came to their houses for meals they would want to get pictures with us and the teenage daughters would flirt with us and want to sit next to us, it was hard not to let it get to your head. We were telling people that we belonged to the “only true and living church on the face of the whole earth”, and that we held the very power of God, the Melchezidek Priesthood, which no one else but worthy Mormon males held. It was an elitist club and we felt like we were on the top of it. It was like when you are in High School and you go through freshman, sophomore, junior years, and then you are finally a senior, and you strut around the halls looking down at all those in the younger grades with your head held high in arrogance. I shamefully admit that I had that attitude in High School and while I was in the Mormon Church, and how can you not?

    With one of my major weaknesses being pride it was almost impossible not to elevate myself in my mind. Our Mission President’s father-in-law was Elder Wirthlin of the 12 Apostles. He came to visit the mission for a big conference and we were all strictly instructed to stand when he entered the room and to stay standing until he had sat down and then we could all be seated. I remember as a youth passing and blessing the Sacrament. We would bless it and then stand there on the platform waiting until all the deacons had reached their first row and passed the trays. Before anyone could eat any bread or water a tray was given to the Bishopric and they had to be the first person to eat or drink. If a Stake President or High Councilmen, or Area Seventy, or any position upward was present on the stand with the Bishopric then they were served first and then the Bishopric, then everyone else. I didn’t see it at the time but it is so blatantly Pharisaical. Look at what Jesus reprimands the Pharisees for in Matt. 24:5-7, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.” They do all their deeds to be seen by others, they wear nice suits that stand out, trying to appear “righteous” and “holy”, and they love the seats of honor at meetings and conferences and they love to be called “Bishop”, or “Apostle” or “Prophet”. Why aren’t the Bishops the ones that pass the Sacrament to the congregation?

    We led worship at a church in Salt Lake City while we were in Utah in September and we had Communion with the congregation. We got up and walked to the front where the Pastor handed us a piece of unleavened bread and gave it to each one and said as he dropped it in our hands “The body of Christ broken for you”. And then he handed us a little cup of grape juice, fruit of the vine, and said “The blood of Christ shed for you” and handed us the cup. Once everyone had one of each we all sat down and he read the Last Supper from the Bible and then we ate and drank. He served us, that’s what leaders in the Body of Christ are supposed to do, serve, not be served.

    Jesus said that those who exalt themselves will be humbled and I hope that those men humble themselves before God before God humbles them. He also says in Matt. 24:11 that the greatest among us should be our servant, so under those guidelines, the 12-year old Deacons and 14-year old Teachers are the greatest in the Ward, above the Bishop. Jesus came not be served but to serve, and He is greater than all of us (Matt. 20:28). The LDS Church is like a pyramid and you try to climb the ladder for promotion and the lesser calling-holders serve the higher-calling holders, but it should be that the 12 Apostles are the lowest and serve everyone else, lifting them above themselves, as Paul did in 1 Cor. 4:9-13 saying that he and the other Apostles of the Lamb were a spectacle to the world, fools for Christ’s sake, weak, held in disrepute, hunger, thirst, poorly dressed, buffeted, homeless, labor with their hands, reviled, persecuted, slandered, like the scum of the world, and like the refuse of all things. He compares the Apostles to the Christians by saying that the Christians are wise in Christ, strong, and held in honor. The Apostles of the LDS Church are not the Apostles of the Lamb, they “claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as [Apostles of the Lamb] do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds” (2 Cor. 11:12-15).

    God showed me that I was exalting myself and needed to humble myself and submit to His Word. When I read the Bible with that approach it was as if I had brand-new eyes and could see for the very first time. I read passages that I had read many times before but this time I understood how they applied to me and I was convicted by my sin. I realized how much I needed to rely on Jesus and I confessed myself a sinner shortly after my mission and accepted Jesus into my heart and life. I still struggle in my flesh with my pride but I have no condemnation because I am in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1) and I praise God that it’s not by my works or my own doing that I am saved (Eph. 2:8-9), but it is only by the grace of God as a free gift (Rom. 6:23), and by that gift I know I have eternal life (1 John 5:13). God bless.

Under the Weather Contemplation

It’s funny how you will have your mind made up and then God will come in and show you how wrong you were and make you eat your words. This has happened to me many times and just happened to me yesterday which I want to write about because my guess is that I’m not the only one that this has happened to. Adam’s Road all live in the Edgewater Hotel together like one big family in one big house. We each have our own mini apartments but we eat dinner together, watch movies together, and see each other throughout the day most of the time. When one person gets a cold or flu it is very easily spread amongst the rest of the group because we live in tight quarters, and though we take all precautions necessary to prevent hotel guests and ourselves from catching it most of the time it is inevitable and ends up with most if not everyone catching it at some point. A year back we had a very nasty cold that turned into mild bronchitis for some of us while we were restoring the third floor of the hotel, and not long after that a nasty 24-hour flu was going around too. This time there was a stomach flu that started with one of Micah’s boys, Jacob and then quickly turned on Micah. My wife Katie didn’t let them being sick stop her from helping them and caring for their needs. My thoughts were that they should quarantine themselves so they won’t get anyone else sick because I definitely didn’t want to catch the virus. I told Katie that I didn’t want to hold my nephew because he was sick and neither did I want to go into their room. I didn’t think I was being selfish by not wanting to get sick but when I put that over helping and caring for the sick people here, that’s when I was being selfish. Katie told me that she had faith that God knew that she didn’t want to get sick either but that she loved Micah and Jacob and everyone else who were catching it more than she cared about her own health and that if God wanted her to get sick, then she would and there was no way to stop that. She still took precautions to limit the germs like hand sanitizer and not touching her face but she was not going to let her worries about getting sick get in the way of helping someone else. I told her that she could do what she wants but I didn’t want to get sick so I was going to keep my distance.

That very next morning I awoke at 7:00 am with early signs of a stomach flu and just like that God humbled me as I needed Katie to care for me and help me. I started thinking about how Jesus would react to someone with sickness asking for help. In Mark Jesus is asked by a leper to touch him and make him clean. It says that Jesus was moved with pity and touched the leper and made him clean (Mark 1:40-44). To understand the significance of being asked to touch a leper we have to go to the Old Testament in Leviticus 13. This was much more than just someone sick with a flu or coughing and sneezing because of a cold, this was a nasty disease that caused the skin to fall off and leave big open flesh wounds and boils and hair to turn white and fall out, sometimes covering the person from head to foot with these sores. The person was called unclean and had to wear torn clothing and had to live alone away from everyone else, quarantined, and they had to call out “unclean, unclean” and let everyone know that they had leprosy. So Jesus cared for that leper more than he cared about the disgusting way he probably looked with his skin falling off, and touched him and healed him. I feel that God has taught me a lesson that just as Jesus says, those who lose their life for His sake will find it, and those who save their life will lose it (Mark 8:35). It’s ironic that I tried so hard to save my health and I was the one to get sick, not the others that visited the sick (Matt. 25:35-36) and helped them. And Paul reminds us in Romans 12:3 that we shouldn’t think more highly of ourselves than we ought to, but use sober judgment. I definitely was looking down on the sick and thought of myself higher than I ought to. I hope from this blog that those who read it will look into their own lives and see the ways that they can lay down their lives for their friends as Jesus laid down His life for us on the cross (John 15:13). God bless.

From My LDS Mission Journal About Becoming Christian

I am writing this blog so that those who read this can understand where I am coming from, and that me becoming a born-again Christian, living my life for Jesus alone and letting His Word govern my life, could only happen by God changing me. I had no intention of ever leaving the LDS church, I would tell people that I was 100% LDS and would die LDS. I was hard-core and nothing and no one could sway me of my faith in the LDS church and everything it taught. That is why it’s so amazing that God opened my eyes and saved me, because only He could reach me, no one else could get to me. I had to come to the point in my life where I started seeing faults in the LDS church so I would look to God alone as my source for truth and not just exclusively the LDS church. That’s when I began to study God’s Word, the Bible and open my heart to accept His truth from the Bible above everything else in my life. I served an honorable LDS mission from June 2004-2006. For the first half of those two years I was completely devoted and passionate about the LDS church, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon. The second half I began to serve for Jesus alone.

Here is an excerpt of my journal after I began to read the Bible and started becoming Christian:

20 Jan 06 “It says that no man has a greater love than he that lays down his life for his friends in John 15:13. It made me start thinking about that. Christ laid down His life for me to live again. He loved me that much to die for me…It’s just incredible to think about how much Christ loves me. I don’t really know, but I have felt God’s love for me many times in my life and there’s no denying it, I know without any doubt that Christ is there for me. That He is beside me all along the way- though sometimes it feels like I am alone and climbing the mountain on my own. But I know that Christ will never leave me, nor will His Spirit cease to guide me in the pathway of Christ. I know that I am never alone, and I don’t know how He still believes in me, when I always let Him down, but I guess He sees some reason for keeping me around. Of all the things I’ve done in my life, and all the times that I had the choice to follow God or to follow my own worldly path and chose the world, and dragged His name back through the mud-and yet He is always there with His arms stretched out still. How amazing is His love. I just long to sing out praises and shouts and rejoice in my God, and my King. I wish my heart could speak what I feel so deep inside My spirit longs to find a voice, but maybe it’s not time yet. I can feel something changing inside, like something being awakened and re-discovered Something fulfilling and that living without it seemed empty and hollow, like something was missing. But now I am feeling more alive than I ever have before. For as long as I can remember, I had no purpose or any that I understood at least, I kind of just floated along oblivious to all the things around me. I just felt like I was waiting to be discovered. As I look back to those times, I have no question that God was there in the midst of it all and He never left my side. He guided me to the point where I am, and never has, nor ever will cease to direct my paths. For He is the only true light, the life of the world, the lover of my soul, my God, and my Salvation. If I follow Him, and just believe, I will be saved. So going along with the scripture that talks about how you don’t have greater love than if you give your life for your friends. Well, If I want to love those around me, I must lose my life in their service for them. And I can develop that love by laying down my life for my friends.”

One more thing I wrote a little later that year as I was learning how to walk as an infant in Christ:

4 May 06 “And something to ask myself and others- If I came to the point where the church tells me to do one thing and God tells me by personal inspiration something else- Who’s voice should I follow? Who would you want me to obey?” Anyone reading this I hope they would ask themselves the same question, and even further, if the church tells you something and then God tells you through His Word, the Bible something different, which one will you follow? God bless.

It's All About Jesus

I just came across a Bible passage that got me thinking about how I used to view salvation and how I used to think that I was supposed to channel everything (my relationship with God, my obedience to Him, my love to Him and others, my guidance and direction, and my authority to act in His name) through the LDS church. I would read scriptures that said that the only name under heaven whereby men could be saved was Jesus Christ, and I would think in my head: That means the LDS church is the only way to be saved. That was my mind-set and my automatic response because I believed I was in Jesus Christ's only true church so therefore I was accessing all of the things that it said were through Jesus. All others that weren't a member of the Mormon church just didn't have all the truth about the restoration of the gospel and therefore they couldn't fully grasp or accept salvation through Jesus Christ because Jesus was only going to save those within His organization that He set up Himself. He wasn't going to save the ones outside of the Mormon church because they weren't worthy and didn't qualify for the Celestial Kingdom, they would not receive exaltation (which is the Christian equivalent of salvation- living with God for eternity).

I remember reading Matt. 11:28-30 where it says "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." It says "Come to me" not come to my church or come to this set of established beliefs, or come to this organized religion, He says come to me. It's about a relationship, to come to Him and give Him our burdens. And by the way, 1 John 5:3 says "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome." And then right before that in 1 John 3:23 it says what the commandments are: "And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us." To all my Mormon readers out there: I don't know about you but obeying the Ten Commandments, Tithing, going to church every Sunday, Home/Visiting Teaching, Magnifying your church calling and all associated meetings, going to the temple, read the Book of Mormon and keeping up-to-date on Church magazines for the First Presidency message, and on and on the list goes; this all was extremely burdensome and on top of that is the guilt when you don't think you did "as much as you could have" and you wonder whether God is pleased with you all the time. And where is there time to develop a personal relationship with Jesus independent of the LDS church, and your worship of God? When does that ever happen when the LDS church puts such a gigantic burden on your shoulders to keep you busy and preoccupied with the LDS church and functions that it's hard to have an active, personal relationship with Jesus amidst it all.

Then there's the one in John 14:5-6 where Jesus is asked by His disciples: "...Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? 6 Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Jesus says that He is the way and the truth, not a certain church or organization. Here was Jesus' chance to explain the way into heaven, the way to eternal life, and if it were through being baptized into His church then surely He would say it now, but He says that He is the way, Jesus is the way. The LDS people should get up in testimony meeting and testify that Jesus is the Truth, not that the LDS church is true or Joseph Smith is a true prophet, but that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life, it's all about Him. This is my hope that someday Mormons will only testify of Jesus in their testimony meetings of the "truth", when now He is a minor side-note. One rarely bears their testimony in Fast and Testimony Meeting without mentioning Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the temple, the current leader of the LDS church (Pres. Monson currently), and the LDS church being the only true church on the earth, and of course the occasional pioneer, family history, geneology, and food storage. Only once have I ever heard someone in a Mormon testimony meeting testify of Jesus alone, and that was Micah Wilder (drummer, band manager, and one of my closest friends) while we were on our Mormon missions; of course when that happened he had already become a born-again Christian and was no longer Mormon, so I guess I have never heard an LDS person only testify of Jesus, that He was enough.

The last verse I want to mention is also what sparked this blog and it's in Mark 9:14-29 and it's where Jesus' disciples are trying to cast out this demon out of a boy and they can't and don't know why. Jesus comes and casts the demon out and afterward the disciples ask Jesus why they couldn't cast it out and this is what Jesus said in verse 29: "This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer [and fasting]." Hmmm... LDS people believe that Jesus gave the disciples the Melchezidek Priesthood and therefore they should have been able to cast out the demons with that authority, but they weren't able to. The Bible doesn't support their view on the Melchezidek Priesthood being given to anyone but explains that Jesus is the only one that holds it forever and is our High Priest forever. But why wouldn't Jesus have told them that this kind of spirit was only driven out by the Melchezidek Priesthood, or the "proper authority", or something like that if the disciples truly had the priesthood? Why didn't Jesus say something like: Come on guys you have the priesthood, cast this spirit out! If they had the priesthood as Mormonism teaches then why didn't Jesus say something about it here? He wanted them to have faith in God and in Him, the Son. When you read it as a child it is simple and clear. What they had was a lack of faith. Earlier in the passage in verse 19 Jesus calls them a "faithless generation", and in 23 He says "All things are possible for one who believes." The point of this passage is that it's about faith in Jesus and faith in God that all things are possible, that nothing is impossible with God.

It's all about Jesus. It's all about faith in Him and it's all about love. If you focus on believing in Jesus (not a church or man, but Jesus Himself through His Word, the Bible), you will come to know Him and I know that because that's how I came to know Jesus, by reading His Word and making it a part of my life. When you come to know Jesus, you will be filled with the love of God because God is love and He will abide in you. This is what brings the peace of knowing who you are: a hell-deserving sinner saved by the grace and mercy of God; why you are here: to live for God and glorify and praise Him because He has saved you; and where you are going: to live forever with God in heaven because through your faith in Jesus you have become born-again and adopted into His household, a new creation in Christ Jesus- 1 John 5:13-14 "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us." If you don't know who you are, why you are here and where you are going according to the Bible, find out. Any questions? God bless.

Journal Excerpts About Finding My Soul Mate

These are some quotes from my journal when I first got back from my mission for the LDS church and was wanting to start the next part of my life, to meet a girl and fall in love with her as I was meant to, because I did believe in destiny and that there was one girl that I was meant to fall in love with and get married and spend the rest of my life with. It might be called old-fashioned or a fairy-tale but my faith that God controlled every part of my life and had a plan laid out for me in my life before I was even born came from my understanding of the Bible and I believed it. I really believed that there was one girl out there that would be my perfect match and I was determined to find her. It was hard for me to wait on what I thought at the time was God's slow timing.

I had just broken off my engagement to a girl I had dated a little before and after my mission and also a short-term relationship with another girl that I had just broken up with when I wrote these entries.

14 Feb 07

"I just had this amazing insight this morning and it's interesting that it just so happens to be Valentine's Day too...Well the thought hit me and really opened my eyes to this. I thought about why I haven't found the girl I'm gonna marry yet, and why I have to have no one right now and why I must wait so long until I find her...and the thought came out of the blue...What would you think about and where would your heart rest, and what would you value most if you had the love of your life; the girl you're going to marry right now? And it caught me off-guard and I was like whoa! If I was in a relationship, how much time would be devoted to God versus her? I realized that I'm so lonely that right now I would put her above everyone else and everything else as well. My thoughts and heart would all be for and about her, and I would value her more than my relationship w/ God. That tells me one thing...my heart is in the wrong place. I spend so much time thinking about how to impress or get girls to like me, that there's hardly any time for God. What about impressing God? Is impressing others more important to me than impressing God...If my heart is living for God and He becomes my number one goal then my focus and thoughts will finally shift from being on myself and my needs of finding my future wife, and turned to knowing and loving God more. With all my heart, and not just part of it...When what I want most in life is anything but Jesus Christ (even marriage or love) I will lose everything. But once my deepest desire is to love and know Jesus and I let my dreams and wishes go, then He will give me everything." Matt. 16:25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. "Psalms 37:4 says "Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart." I find great strength in this scripture. If I stop worrying about where my wife is and when I'm gonna meet her and blah blah blah- and just delight myself in the Lord, then my wife will come to me and my heart will be ready."

16 Feb 07

"I am trying to give God my want for a girl in my life right now but it's so hard. I feel discouraged because I don't know if I can give that up...I want someone to have close to me and to connect with so bad, it's just hard when I feel the loneliness creep in. I feel like it's so far away till I'll be ready to have someone. I need to give my heart to God first or I will never find her. That's how I feel and that's why it's hard for me because I want to find a girl now. but my heart is so weak and is set so much on finding a girl or being in a relationship that there's not as much room left for Jesus to be my love. I'm distracted right now and I need help. I need to give it up to God."

There's a Bible verse that really means a lot to me: Phil. 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I made my requests known to God about finding a girl to love and spend the rest of my life with and then I just did my best to trust Him and focus on Him. When I finally started to forget about girls and tried to show God how much I loved Him for saving me by living for Him and living His Word, then Katie came into my life. Our relationship was a friendship where we talked on the phone about God and how amazing He was. She was in Utah finishing up High School and I was in Florida with her brothers who are in the band (that's how we met), and we started calling each other many times a week because we had both left the Mormon church and were discovering this brand-new world of living the New Law of grace, and a relationship with Jesus. We talked for hours and hours about Jesus and the Bible and shared insights and sang songs to each other and fell in love because we both loved Jesus with all our hearts. We didn't even think about "us" only God and Jesus. So when we developed strong feelings for each other it just felt right because it was happening within us by God and not ourselves. We just loved God and it was like He connected us together through our connection and intimacy with Him. Now we are happily married and have been for two years. Our relationship began in the Word of God and in the Love of God and that's where we are striving to keep it. We encourage each other in our faith in Jesus and hold each other to the Bible. We are one with each other, all other Christians around the World in the Body of Christ, and with Christ Himself as He is one with God.

I hope these insights will help anyone out there who is focused on finding their future love as I was, to stop, and focus on the only true love, Jesus Christ. He will never let you down or disappoint, He is always faithful and committed, and His love never fails. If you delight yourself in Him, fall in head-over-heels love with Him, He will give you the desires of your heart and you will find rest and peace. He is my true love and I don't need anything else in this life. Like Paul says, I count everything that I once counted as gain, as loss compared to the surpassing riches of knowing my Lord Jesus (Phil. 3:7-9). God bless.

New Year's Resolutions

I hear and read a lot of people make goals for the next year that they want to accomplish and improve on. I personally don't make New Year's Resolutions because my feelings are that if it's something that is going to take a year to improve upon then it's probably something that needs to be taken one day at a time and thereby becomes a daily resolution. The reason I say this is because the Bible teaches us in James 4:13-16 that we don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow so how can we possibly know what will be in our lives in a year! We just need to trust God and make goals but say "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." Check this out, this is really cool. The Bible really does have all the answers.

James 4:13-16
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"- 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

If people make their resolution to improve on their financial standing be it debt, payments, mortgage, whatever, they need to trust God and wait on Him and His will. It's okay to make goals if you set your goals with flexibility so that you aren't boasting in your arrogance but with faith you are trusting God and ready to change your goals to fit His will. That's where the "if the Lord wills" part comes in.

And especially for those that make their New Year Resolutions to fall in love or find that special someone, Psalms 37:4 says "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." The focus should be on Jesus and if you delight yourself in Him, just totally fall in head-over-heels love for Jesus, He will give you the desires of your heart. I did this and now I have a beautiful wife. We fell in love as we talked about our love for God and what He had done in our lives, and read the Bible together. In my case God's will was for me to meet Katie and marry her, and each has to follow God's will for their individual lives.

I think the perfect New Year's Resolution is to devote myself to Jesus afresh every day. I didn't say to a church, or to any man, but to Jesus and to follow His Word, the Bible. That would be my resolution, I will take things one day at a time and not be anxious or worry about tomorrow or this coming year, but with faith I will re-dedicate myself to Jesus Christ each day and live for Him because I love Him and He loves me. I will make my requests known to God with prayer and thanksgiving and not be anxious about them but trust and have faith.

Phil. 4:6
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Worst Date Night Ever!

So I want to preface this with clarifying that it wasn't my wife that made it the worst date night, nor was it the dinner, nor the movie..well I'll tell you what happened. So Katie and I decide we want to go see the new Avatar movie in IMAX 3D last night and after checking the showtimes we figure out an evening showing and plan to eat out beforehand. We hadn't been on a date night in several months so we were both excited for the evening plans. I ordered the tickets online and right after I purchased them I realized that I had bought tickets for the Avatar in RealD 3D, not IMAX. That was the first unfortunate event. I was stressing out and feeling like a moron at this point because we were looking forward to IMAX specifically, but it was cool, I finally calmed down and remembered that I could be content in every circumstance and this was no exception. Philippians 4:11 says "...for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

I already have reservations about driving on freeways especially the toll roads in Florida (perhaps some trauma from my mild freeway accident when I was in High School)so I got directions from Mapquest and was fairly comfortable with knowing where I was going if I relied on those directions. I double-checked the directions with two friends that knew the roads much better than I and found that all my Mapquest directions were messed up for some reason. So I borrowed a GPS from a friend and Katie and I were ready to go. We drove to Outback Steakhouse in Orlando and praise God, we had a great dinner. Katie had the Coconut Shrimp and Aussie fries, and I had the 9 oz. steak with mashed potatoes and seasoned veggies. I helped Katie with the fries and we finished eating with plenty of time to get to the theater, so I thought. Everything was good so far and we were like 2 miles away from the Regal Pointe Theater and IMAX when the traffic was backed up from a red light because there was a lot of cross-traffic at this intersection. I am watching the minutes tick by as we are bumper-to-bumper going 2 mph and then stopping. I keep remembering that the worst thing to happen will be that we might not get to the movie early to get a good seat or we might miss a little of the movie depending on how much we're delayed. But we still had a good 45 minutes before the show and we were like 9 minutes from our destination.

We arrive at the parking garage and get our ticket and search for a parking spot. Cars are backing up and others taking their spots, while pedestrians are walking all around to and from cars. It was a madhouse and driving the big green truck, unfamiliar with where my vehicle ends are I was tense. We find a spot and the coast is clear so I am trying to slip in gently to this spot and I slightly bump the car next to me. I panicked, Oh God this isn't happening I thought. I park the car and get out to see the damage. It was like a bad dream, but it would get worse. I had been idling when I grazed the car so it was a cracked tail light and a little yellow mark from the bumper or something. It did have a security system active but it wasn't set off by the jostle. I didn't see anyone in the car or around and we were going to be late for our movie so I wrote a note with my name and phone number and told them I was sorry. We rush to the movie and get there about 20 minutes before it was going to start. There was only two of us so it wasn't hard to find a decent seat and I tried to forget about the awful feeling I had inside because of the accident and did my best to enjoy the movie.

The movie itself was incredible, if there's anyone out there wondering if they should see it, whoo! Go check it out, it's awesome! Dazzling special effects and non-stop action, great acting and cast. It was just unbelievable, I wanted to see it again as soon as it ended. So it ended and we get back to the truck where the vehicle I hit had already left. I just thought, well it's in God's hands now. We get to the exit of the parking garage and to my horror I remember that we didn't validate our parking ticket at the theater. Panicking again I just tried to figure out what to do. Well I'm sure they take credit cards and I had a credit card with some money on it so it would be okay. As I pull up there's a sign that says "Cash or Check only" and that was it. My nightmare was complete. I dropped my head into my hands in despair. What were we going to do? Cars were piling behind us and I explained to the lady that we had just seen a movie and forgotten to validate our tickets at the theater. I had thrown away my ticket stub in the theater, but praise God, Katie had hers and we gave it to her. She looked at me and then at all the cars behind us and told us to go on through. I was so relieved and praised and thanked God for her because she really trusted us just on our word, while I'm sure lots of people try to con them out of paying with stories like that.

From there we filled up on gas and drove home. It was such a relief to be home again, on familiar streets, where I could walk to anywhere I needed to go almost. Katie and I looked at each other smiling and agreed that we just weren't cut out for the world. We should probably just stay out of the big Orlando city scene if we were going on our own, and just stick with our small town Winter Garden life. We watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond to unwind, and went to bed.

I believe what the Bible teaches about God knowing everything that will happen to me and allowing bad things to happen so I will trust in Him and rely on Him more. It's like a reminder of how much I desperately need Him. The wrong movie ticket wasn't enough for me to turn my thoughts to God, it just made me stressed out and irritable. Both are the opposite of Christian faith and love. Then the wrong directions so I would rely on Him and trust Him to get me where I was going, again only making me more tense and stressed, relying on myself and the GPS. Then bumping the car is when I finally realized that I was looking and relying on myself and other things that would mess up and fail, and not on my all-powerful God for help. And even after turning to God for that, when the parking garage ticket encounter happened, I panicked and despaired instead of prayed and trusted God. Those are the things that I learned. It just reminds me that I am a hopeless sinner and how much I need Jesus to save me and how much I need God to live in me and work in me.