I would...

Were I to step into the shallow's swallow
I would have no fear,

With contempt rising to crush my content;
For I know that You can hear.

Were the fires to backlash and burn ablaze
I would have no fear,

With darkness dawning in distant days;
For I know that You are here.

Uncompromised Love

Matt 4:24-25
"The News about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. Large crowds followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan."

If this isn't a testament to the Love of Christ, I don't know what is. To see this, you have to visualize this. Think about a convention centered around one man. Now strip out an actual building for it to happen in, take away a stage, zero volunteers. At this point we can assume He had probably four disciples with Him, but I'm sure they were just as amazed of this as all the other people, so they weren't going to be much help. Now put hundreds, if not thousands of people coming to this one man to heal this, to fix that. Perhaps even some hypochondriacs.

Now to top all this off, take into consideration that He willed this to happen. He is God after all. He willed His Spirit to create a longing in them to come. Even if they came by response to word-of-mouth, they were still given the faith to seek Him out

He willed them to come, He gave them faith to follow through with that desire, He endured through what we would consider "needy, annoying, self-absorbed" people, and not at a single point do we see Matthew recording "And at that point, Jesus became fed up with the people and their selfish needs and left them in a huff." or "from time to time you could hear grumblings from Jesus about how needy these people were."

No, Jesus not only endured this, He more than likely absolutely loved it. This is after-all our Creator. He then, after taking care of all their needs, begins to teach them! His patience has barely been tapped in to! Granted, this was probably an excellent way to get that kind of crowd to hear Him, but the basis for these actions, tact aside, is still His love for them, in healing and in teaching.

So let us, therefore, learn from this lesson. Not of healing, but of love. How often do care for those of whom we do not know, and even when we do show that caring, grumble within it. We wear our love on the outside falsely, and still show our disdain on the inside. Let us all go to our Lord and seek a greater love that cares inside and out, that we might be more like Jesus in every way! Let us learn in the same way that Paul more than likely learned with saying "As for you brothers, do not grow weary in doing good" 2 Timothy 3:13.

Coming Soon

Though no one probably follows this yet. I will have some more content coming soon. I am back to writing some things lately and I am trying to boil a few of my ideas down a bit so they aren't gigantic writings to have to wade through.

Be patient all you lack of people out there! For all of you who don't read my blog at all and know nothing of it, I will have more content soon! hah.

Of Birth

This very day marks my twenty-sixth year
I thank you all who wish me good cheer

I would like to request from all of you, however
That you would give our Lord all the glory and splendor

For today most assuredly marks my birth
But it is first and foremost to show His worth

For my life lived without spot on His glory
Would be a worthless life of an untold story

So please look to the one who gives us all breath
Who sent His Son: A death for no death

Lift your hands up all you who live
For today is not mine, but ultimately His

An Honorable, God-fearing President

A Statement of urgency made by President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War:

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme authority and Just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation:

And whereas, it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishment and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for out presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And i do hereby request all the People to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the divine teachings that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and restoration of our now divided and suffering country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh. Abraham Lincoln

Library of Congress, Appendix No. 19 Vol. 12

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First of all, I want all of you reading this to notice something within the very first line of this quote. Who asked the President to establish this? The SENATE? Goodness we've fallen a long way...

Second, were we to have such a president as this... this country would be a much different, peaceful, and powerful country. We have lost our edge as a nation because we have lost our God as its true authority.

Interestingly enough, 2 days after this day of prayer and "humiliation", Confederate army commander Stonewall Jackson was shot...by one of his own confederates, and died 8 days later due to complications of pneumonia. This was a HUGE slam to the confederate army. Not only did they lose one of the United State's greatest tactical commanders, but their army and general public lost a great deal of morale through this as well.

Doesn't quite sound like a coincidence to me.