Desires, vision, dreams, goals for your life are a powerful thing! They point you in the direction your life is to travel. Without a vision for the future it’s like you are aimlessly, pointlessly walking through life. Your life could go anywhere, and you don’t really have much to say about it because you have set no course.

This is a faith based blog, and I’m a faith based guy. My faith in Jesus is the foundation of my entire life. It’s what I build everything on. A lot of faith people, or more appropriately put religious people might ask: what’s the big thing about goals? Why do I need to have a dream for my life? Isn’t God in control? They use scriptures like Proverbs 16:9 which says “We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps”. I think the thought process is: If the Lord determines my steps anyway what’s the point of bothering thinking about, or planning my future. But the thing about a scripture like Proverbs 16:9 is that it never adds into the equation “So don’t bother making plans”…it was lazy, scared, bone headed religious people who added that thought.

Holy S%*@! Okay…the weird symbols don’t disguise much do they? You’ve already said the word in your head! Sorry to do that to you…especially those of you who don’t swear in your regular life. I don’t either…well okay unless it’s by total accident.

Welcome to this week’s blog! An interesting opening statement given the generally spiritual overlaying theme of this blog right? Here’s where I’m going…We’ll use Holy Crap from now on to make all the religious folks feel better…Or maybe you’d prefer holy poop, or holy feces, or just holy stinky stuff! Whatever word you use it all means the same thing anyway. Here’s the question…can the stinky stuff we go through in life ever be Holy? You were wondering if we’d ever get back to the spiritual side of this blog weren’t you!

Life is full of ups and downs. I often find that right after an “UP” we’ll call it a “moment of momentum” there often seems to be a down. Is that just coincidence or is there a point to all this madness. I think life has a way of testing us all for sure. Some people today say “God doesn’t test us…everything he does is good.” Possibly that could be true, but one thing I know for sure whether it’s God, the Devil, or just reality…is that there will be tests in life. I also wonder if people who think God puts no tests in front of us (tests being different than temptations let’s be clear) realize what the point of a test even is?

Anticipation is an interesting thing. I think as human beings, we are generally in a state of perpetual anticipation. Something is always around the corner in our lives: Maybe it’s a big game, a hot date, or a family vacation. There’s usually something we are looking forward to (anticipating) in life. In my relatively short albeit experience filled life, I have encountered or perceived three general human responses to anticipation. It thought I’d talk about them a bit on my blog today…

#1 Worry – This is generally the most annoying response to me. I consider myself a person of faith, and it’s especially bothersome to me when other people of faith choose to let worry be the path they travel down as a result of the expectation of a future event. In the Bible Jesus says in Matthew 6 “Don’t worry about your life.” He was talking to people who were following him. Later in the chapter he poses the question “Can you even add a day to your life by worrying?” In other words, worrying does nothing positive for you. We now know through science and the study of the affects of stress on the human body that not only is worry not beneficial, it can have deadly consequences! Not only can you not add a single day to your life through worry, but you could actually subtract quite a few!

Hello to all the blog readers….sorry for the layoff! It’s definitely been intentional though. Seems like lately life has been filled with more questions than answers and more frustration than insight. It’s been a season of pondering for me about what currently is, what has been, and what is yet to be. I am definitely not the average minister, sometimes I wonder “why me God”. I like to fight (I train mixed martial arts), I like the taste of beer so I drink it (not in excess), I usually find church services boring and cliche, I’m divorced, and many times people who call themselves “on fire” christians are the most annoying people to me. Are you getting why I question why I’m the minister guy yet? The traditions of men more specifically the traditions of the “Religion” I was raised in say: No fighting under any circumstances, beer is of the Devil, Church Services should be the most important thing in your entire life, if you’re divorced you are screwed up and you can’t be a minister, and you should ALWAYS claim to be “on fire” and you’re best friends should be “on fire” christians…………whatever that even means.

Fortunately what defines who am am is not religion, nor is it the traditions or opinions of people. For me, what defines me is that fact that I am alive in Christ, meaning I beleive in the historic account of the life of Jesus and I beleive he was raised from the dead. I beleive he is the remedy for the condition of humanity we in religious church circles call “sin”. Not only do I beleive this, I have experienced this. I’ve never got into my personal life much on my blog…but hey it’s a new year so what the heck.