Praising God

    Our teaching today in church was about praising God.  I took notes on what I thought would be the most important things to remember.

   When we worship God at church we start out with having a worship band play music.  During this time of worship music, most people choose to dance and lift up their hands in the air.  One of the things I like about Living Light (my church) is that everyone participates to the fullest in worship.  They aren't afraid of what others around them will think like most churches, they just give it their all.
   We are sometimes afraid to give our all in praise, just because what the other's will think around us.  Yes, we are humiliating ourselves, but it doesn't matter what anyone thinks around us.  Being concerned with what people think is a form of pride, and God likes humble people.  It doesn't matter what other people think, what matters is what God thinks.  It's a form of obedience, do what God is calling you to do in praise.

   When you praise God, their should be evidence that you have praised him.  People around you should see that, that's what you are doing.  Thanking God silently is a totally different thing.  Praising God is hard, that is because it is a form of sacrifice.  Praising God, sacrifices our attention, pride, energy, and time.  We need to praise God even when we don't feel like it, or when he seems far a way.  Like when we hear bad news.  God is there to help us through these situations, he never leaves our side.

    Praising God can be used as a weapon against the enemy.  A tip for ending a fight is to stop, and praise God for what he has done in your life, and usually the fight will end because you'll notice how much the fight didn't matter in the first place.

Here are a few verses you can check out, on the importance of praise or just praising God in general.
- 1 Peter 2 : 9-10
- Acts 16 : 23-25
-Psalm 51: 16-17
- Hebrews 13:15
- James 4:6
- Psalm 8:1-2

A Question I get A lot

    There's a question I've been getting a lot lately since I've become a stronger Christian, and it hurts a little.  I know people aren't trying to hurt me when they ask this question, but it can sting a little.  This question is "Why does church make you so happy, why are you so obsessed with God?"  or a question that questions how strong of a believer I am.

    When did it become the norm not to praise God?  When did it become the norm to instead have teenagers lose themselves in other things?  Why is it the norm for teenagers to go out and party and drink on Friday nights.  When being so in love with God become a questioned thing.  It didn't used to be this way.  It should be the other way around that it's seen as weird to go out and drink, but it's not and this is the world we live in. People don't understand the greatness I feel when at a church service or just worshipping God on my own time, unless they're like me too.

   Even our youth group on campus, doesn't get treated the same as other organizations on campus.  We don't get all the other opportunities as all the other organizations on campus, because they are afraid of us for being a Christian organization.
 
  The enemy (Satan) is trying to hurt God, by taking people who could be saved, and making them full into a pit of desires of the flesh.  Satan is hurting God by taking some of the souls that could be saved and bringing them to him.  One of the signs of the second coming of Jesus, is a world with disinterest in Christianity and God.  We have, and are becoming that more and more each day.  

Weekly Prayer Chain

    I guess the best ideas come to my head, when I should be sleeping.  (I decided to start my homework at 12:30, got distracted and now here we are at almost 4am).  (I guess I might need prayers to get through tomorrow, I did take a night nap and woke up at 12:30)

   My idea was to list all the things each week that people need help praying for, and update it throughout the week as more prayers come in.  That way it can be sort of like a prayer chain, instead of only one or two people praying about a certain issue. So heres this week's list :D Please help us pray for these people.  I'm hoping to make a new list each week, of new prayers or progress of situations.

1) After so many weeks of being super happy, I broke down a little bit yesterday.  So I just pray that yesterday will be the only time in a long time that,that happens.  (A psychological study actually said if you feel really happy for a long period you need to feel sad to balance it out,so maybe that's what that was). But I'd much rather not feel like that again if possible :D

2) I pray for my summer once again, some things I don't agree with right now, but I know God will do whatever he needs me to do this summer.

3) I just pray for my future career path.  People ask me what I'm majoring in and I just tell them International Studies so I have an answer.  I really don't know if it's the right path for me.  My friend Jeremy's having a similar problem.  He can't stand his major or any of the classes hes in.  So I just pray that God puts him on the right path, and he would be happy with whatever God chooses for him.  

4) I would also like to pray for Jeremy's grandparents,  His grandpa had to go to the hospital recently.  He's out of the hospital now, but still needs help with things, and his grandma is holding all of this stress with her, and hasn't been able to sleep.

5) I pray for Jeremy's mom's new job.  She got a new job teaching at a school with very little discipline and education.  It seems like she had to start from scratch at this new job.

6) I pray for Jeremy's dad's basement that flooded during the storm, almost 2 weeks ago now.  They had just redone the flooring.  So I pray that they can fix the source of the problem.

7) I pray for the last few weeks of school, as everything is wrapping up and there's a lot of chaos with final projects and exams.

8) I pray for my aunt and uncle Bonnie and Bruce who have been experiencing a ton of bad luck financially as well as with their health.  That they would have some great things happen in their life soon.
9) I pray for my grandma (Nana) who's had trouble sleeping recently because of having pain in her legs, that she is able to get some rest, and be healed of some of the pain she is experiencing.

10) I pray for my dog Luke, who is getting up there in age.  My family and I hope he at least makes it to his 13th birthday in July.  He's been such a great dog, and hes been there since I was pretty young, so its kind of sad for me to know, he doesn't have much longer.

11) Jeremy's grandma is now in the hospital as well, but is doing alright except for not being all mentally there, because of her husband's health problems.

-If you need something to be prayed for, let me know and I'll add it to the list.

Reaching My Goals and Becoming Outgoing

       I had noticed that the Christian youth group on campus, was such a tight knit group of people.  I knew I wanted to be a part of that.  A goal I strived for. I would spend as much time as possible with the Cru people, hoping I would become part of the family.  A goal I was passionate about, but honestly didn't know if I could pull off.  But I looked at my friend group, and I didn't like what I saw minus Laurette (Shes had my back since Day 2 of college, love you girl.) I wanted something better for myself.  The people on 3 north who I had surrounded myself with for the most part all had a negative view on their life, their negativity didn't help me adapt to college.  It made things much harder, and more stressful.  I knew I needed more people like Laurette, who had a super positive view on life like 90% of the time.  We all have our moments of negativity of course, but its so much easier to hang out with people who are on fire for God.

     Another goal I've had since I was younger was to be outgoing. I was always outgoing with my friends, but when it came to random people, I just never knew what to say.  I didn't like that about myself, I just wanted to be able to talk to anyone.  For the most part I think I've accomplished that goal.  Especially looking at the events that have happened recently.  People come to Cru now and they come to me, and see me as the girl apart of this amazing Cru Family.  I am able to greet the new people who come to Cru and have conversations with them,  The self-conscious feeling that people really didn't actually like me vanished when I could see the genuineness of everyone's actions around me.  I've gotten super close with everyone in Cru, and it just makes me very very excited.  I still can be shy, and I don't always know what to say, but I'm working on it, and God has blessed me so much this far.  Everything's great, and I can honestly say I have found my true friends here.  Ones who do stupid stuff with me, sing with me, make me laugh, or talk to me at the late hours of the night.  Praise God for blessing me with such relationships.

Judge Judy Rules Poliwager a Success

So a little over 6 years ago my friend Jeremy made a Pokemon website, named after his favorite Pokemon Poliwag.  On this website you can adopt/hatch Pokemon, breed Pokemon, feed your Pokemon, or go on the Poliwager Forums to talk to other people who are apart of the website.  A few days ago I had a dream about the website, and as the title suggests it contains Judge Judy in it.  I told Jeremy about it, and he thought I should post about the dream here because he thought people would find it pretty funny.  So before I forget it (If it's even possible to forget dreams containing Judge Judy) here ya'll go.

In the dream the success of the Poliwager was going up at a high rate, so Jeremy decided to drop out of college.  He assumed the success of his website would keep growing and growing.  Jeremy then told his friend Kyle his thoughts about dropping out.  Kyle basically told him he was losing his mind, and how Jeremy should get an actual job.

Jeremy was optimistic though, but a few weeks after dropping out, his website started losing users.  Jeremy started to believe that maybe this whole thing was an extremely stupid idea.  Until one day when the success of his website started increasing rapidly out of the blue.

The success of the website was caused by none other than Judge Judy.  I (Alex) decided to watch Judge Judy, so were supposedly a ton of people around the world.  In the episode Judge Judy was holding a microphone that had a Poliwrath on it (an evolved form of Poliwag) with poliwager.net written under it.  Judge Judy and one of the people she was evaluating got into an argument, which pretty much happens in every episode.  This person had pushed it to far though, saying that Poliwager was stupid.  Judge Judy stated how the guy was ignorant.  From seeing this episode a ton of people were curious about what poliwager.net was and decided to join the website.

Jeremy was unaware of the success of the website until I told him to go on and check it out.  Jeremy was very confused but thrilled as well.

The moral of the story is that a cranky old lady secretly has a passion for Pokemon, and that you guys should check out Jeremy's website: http://poliwager.net/

Song Meanings

I just love knowing the stories behind he lyrics of songs, so for this blogpost I decided to put my iPod of shuffle and the first 10 songs I got, I looked up, and here is a little bit about the writing. (Without any repeats on song artists)  Hope you enjoy it.  I did a blogpost like this in the past, so here's kind of like a part 2 to that.  

Gasoline- Troye Sivan:  So not many people know who Troye Sivan is yet, so I'll start off with a little information about him.  He started off as an actor for the Spud movies (The Spud series in a popular book series in South Africa, its actually pretty hilarious) As he grew up he started making YouTube videos and by 2013 he became a popular YouTuber and signed a record deal, and now records his own music.  He's Australian.  

Gasoline is actually Troye's most personal song on the first album he released TRXYE.  This song is all about the feelings associated with heartbreak: pain, sadness, and longing.  The song tells a story of how he broke up with his boyfriend because he was looking for someone better, and he knew that he didn't deserve him but a lifelong person in his life.  

Last of the American Girls- Green Day: Billie Joe Armstrong was helping rebuild houses after Hurricane Katrina when he rewrote this song.  It's written about a fictional girl, and what she would of went through if she had survived the hurricane, and the lyrics compare the girl to a hurricane as well.

And I Love Her- The Beatles: I absolutely adore this song.  It's one of my favorite Beatles songs it's definitely my favorite off the Hard Day's Night Album.  This song was written in Paul McCartney's ex girlfriend's basement (Jane Asher).  It was written as a love ballad and later put into the film Hard Day's Night.  

Paradise- Coldplay: This song is about a girl who wants to keep her childlike innocence by dreaming.  She had high expectations for her life, like it was suppose to be a fairy tale.  In her dreams she lives in the world she wants to be reality.  

Santeria- Sublime:  This song is about getting revenge after he catches his girlfriend cheating on him.  

Snap Out of It- Arctic Monkeys: It's about a guy's ex falling in love with a different guy, but he doesn't want to lose her forever so he hopes it doesn't work out.

Fake You Out- twenty-one pilots: Tyler Joseph the lead singer of twenty-one pilots likes to keep his lyric meanings to himself, but I interpret it as that the person in the song is going through a tough time in their life, but they fake being okay, so people don't have to feel sorry or feel bad about them.  

Nice Guys- Chester See, Ryan Higa, Kevjumba:  This song was written as a comedy song by the YouTuber Ryan Higa (nigahiga).  He wrote it to explain how girls usually fall in love with the "bad guys"  so the main character in the song pretends to be a jerk, because being nice never works and how he just wants to compliment his girlfriend but doesn't think he can.

What is and What Should Never Be- Led Zeppelin: The song is about an affair between a man and his wive's younger sister.

You Alone- David Crowder Band: This is a song about how God has given us more than we can ever imagine, and him alone is the only one who can do that.  It's also a song about praising God.

This is Gospel- Panic at the Disco: This song was written about how we only remember bits and pieces of our past, and then you create yourself based on those memories.  The lead singer Brendon Urie actually wrote the song about the drummer of the band's drug addiction.  At the time he wrote the song he was angry at himself and the fact that his friend had an addiction.  

I actually did eleven songs...whoops 

Passivity in Faith

~My friend Trae sent me this in podcast form, because he thought I would find encouragement in it.  So I'm going to state what I got out of the podcast and interesting facts I learned.

A lot of people are passive in their faith, and in their lives in general.  In order for our faith to be strong though, we cannot be passive in our faith.  Most of the time people who lead passive lives would rather escape from the problems they are facing rather than overcome them.  The idea of escaping problems instead of overcoming them reminds me of suicide.  The person begins to believe that they would rather take their life (escape their problems) instead of overcoming them, or finding hope in their situations and trusting God.  We can't expect deliverance from our problems in most cases, so we must face them.

The largest amount of passivity in churches is taking place in the United States, because of passivity there is a lack of leadership today also, because leaders cannot be passive they must take control.  Passivity keeps us from fulfilling what God wants us to fulfill.  We don't act on what God is telling us to do, we just push it off.  However, more people are being born again then ever before.

One of the most interesting things they said in the podcast was how college level kids are the most likely group to get their faith destroyed.  In college being a Christian especially a leader is taboo.  In other words it's not cool to be that one "Jesus freak".  Not wanting to be in an out group, people don't act on their feelings of religion, and kind of suppress their thoughts on the matter.

A lot of passive people make excuses to why they are so passive, and often see problems instead of opportunities.  Passive people also tend to either live in the past or future instead of the now.  They mistake being passive for peace.  For example keeping an unpopular opinion to yourself so a fight/argument doesn't break out.  We must wake up every morning ready to fight.  The enemy is all around us on Earth.

David could of just as easily not have been prepared to fight Goliath, and someone else could of taken his place had he been a passive person.  David was not a passive person however and woke up everyday filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to fight.

Lastly have you ever thought how cool it is that we are all filled with the same Holy Spirit.  We are filled with the Holy Spirit Jesus had while he walked the Earth, the same spirit as Peter, the same spirit as all the greatest people we can think of.  There were no differences in the Spirit.  Every single born again individual has been filled with the same one, and that is just a really encouraging and incredible thought to me.