Matthew 6:33 Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all other things will be added to you...

I have to say that I have firsthand knowledge that this scripture works..It worked for me..One time in my life, I said Yes to God and in every conceivable way, he poured out his blessings on me, on us, on my family.

I obeyed because I wanted to please God and because I wanted to feel holy as I entered into marriage.

I have not always obeyed God, particularly with regard to sex..I was the sassy, classy good girl who could be erotic and funny and sweet at the same time..I wanted to please God but I have always struggled with the sexual issues..He says..."not outside marriage" and I said.."Oh but...I have this sexy boyfriend, I must" and so the guilt continued..

It was quite the dilemma for a girl/woman who wanted to do the right thing.

Enter H.

We met at an alumni dance at the University of British Columbia..There were hundreds of people in the room and our eyes locked across the room, literally...I never expected it...but the energy was there..

He always said..."It was love at first sight"..

I remember there was not more than a few moments that we weren't aware of where the other person was that evening in the midst of all of those people....eventually we spoke..drawn to each other in the middle of the room like a moth to a flame...H was very cute, almost boyish, tall, blondish wavy hair, twinkle in his eye yet he had a slight timidity that was charming. I liked him but I was just getting out of a relationship so I told him that I couldn't see him..

On my way out to my car, I almost slapped myself for not giving him my number.
I wanted to see him...Just then he passed behind my car and when I rolled down my car window, he came over...I got out of the car...kissed him and said.."Call me".

He did..

We encountered a lot of bumps along the road in our 4 years that lead up to marriage...We broke up...We got back together..There was much soulsearching..but one thing I know for certain..

We practiced Mathew 6:33 and God was faithful.

H and I became engaged...We set a date..We wanted to be married in the same church that I was baptized in so we made an appointment to meet with the pastor..During the conversation, we told him that we had been living together..

He told us...that marriage is holy and the marriage bed is sacred..
H and I discussed right in front of the pastor whether we could remain celebate until we were husband and wife..

We made a committment to each other and to God right then and there that we would remain celebate for 6 months until we married...and we did..We did..

This time was a time to get to the know the man H...Sex had been great but now....I got to know the man...and where there was doubt before, I realized during our celibacy that I now wanted to marry him because of who he was.

When I walked down the aisle, I felt God's blessing...Why??? Because we put God First..
It was the only time I have put God first with complete obedience...and during my marriage to H............we were blessed with abundance.
Within a year of being married, we bought a home, I got pregnant and we began to prosper financially...That was Mathew 6:33 in action.

The marriage ended after almost 20 years............but it was a successful marriage, it was....We are still friendly and there is still love in our relationship but he is not the man I will live with until death.

Moral of the story....Mathew 6:33..works..
If a person truly seeks to please God, God will pour out his blessings on you..
This is a reminder to self.

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Last night's epic dream:

My dream started out with Ash and myself walking around what was apparently Hemlington - but it certainly didn't look like it. It looked very similar to that of Ambleside town. We wandered around for a while, then went back to Ash's bungalow.
When we returned, Ash says to me: "Didn't you notice that shop at the end of the avenue? You'd proper like it."
I responded: "No, I didn't see any shop..."
Ash says: "Oh, it was a wheelchair shop."
I say: "Well why would I like that?"
Ash replies: "Because they had a sign up outside saying they were closing down and all stock was reduced..." -she puts up three fingers - "To THREE QUID!"
I proper had a spazzy fit and shouted: "OMG, LET'S GO BACK THEN!"
Ash goes: "No way, you're not getting one. Why would you want one? To trick people into thinking you're crippled?"
I say: "No! For artistic things, films, photos - the like."
Ash says: "Well you could borrow mine for that."
I scream at her: "NOOOO!!! I WANT A FOLDING ONE!!!"
I ended up having a proper tantrum fit, and this resulted in both of Ash's parents and a shitload of randomers all shouting at me.

Following this, I was sat on the floor in their living room - everyone and these randomers were all sat around on the sofas watching films and talking PROPER loud. I was playing on a GBA with headphones in so I didn't have to listen to them.
Then we all ended up going out to some random church hall where everyone was sat around on wooden tables, listening to this random bible-bashing woman having a proper orgasmic rant about the power of Jesus and Christianity. Whenever anybody yawned or somehow looked distracted, she'd run up to their table and yell things at them about them going to hell and they'd be eternally damned.

I started daydreaming and gazing out of the window.
This woman runs up to my table and shouts: "WHAT'RE YOU LOOKING AT?! YOU SHOULD BE READING YOUR BIBLE!!"
I shake my head at her and calmly respond: "It's because of over-enthusiastic, Jesus-fucking bible-bashers that people can't decide their own path in life anymore. Stop wasting your time trying to convert atheists. We'll all go to hell with you and sodomise you with pitchforks."

Then this woman proper bursts into tears and runs out crying and everyone in the hall proper started cheering.
Ash looks at me proper shocked and says: "How the hell do you get people to agree with you?! I can proper never do it!"

Following this, nobody seemed to move from the tables, but instead everyone took out GBAs and started playing this random game where you had to swim underwater as a shark and collect sunken pirate ships.
I beat everybody at it on the first round, but the scores for the second round weren't revealed and that we had to wait until tomorrow to get them.

I woke up laid on the floor of a bus - next to the bus driver, a random gadge sat on a seat beside me and a pile of my shoes next to me.
The gadge said I could only save two pairs, so I put a pair of black Converse on and picked up a pair that were identical to the new pair I got the other week. The black, white and red patterned ones.
I asked him when the bus was going to stop, and the driver responded that it wasn't going to.

So the random gadge and I started ramming our shoulders against the bus doors until they burst open. Then we both leapt out and did like an epic-slow-motion dive out across the road and we landed on a patch of grass infront of Ash's house.
(Which is odd, because there isn't grass infront of Ash's house, it's paved.)

Ash comes out and she starts whinging on at me.
I yell at her: "OMG YOU DIDN'T EVEN SEE MY EPIC DIVE OUT OF THE BUS! YOU FUCKING CUNT, I'M NOT DOING IT AGAIN FOR YOU!!!"
Then she shakes her head and says that I scored 125 points in the pirate ship GBA game and the gadge behind me scored 180.

I proper fell to my knees and started screaming - before I woke up, wondering what the bloody hell that dream was about. :)

As obvious from my last post, I have been having a rough time lately. It is ok. I don't want pity, prayers would be nice though!

 

I do want to ask specifically for prayers for my husband's grandpa. He is in Chicago and was scheduled to have open heart surgery today. Last night we got a call that the Dr cancelled the surgery because of fluid around his lungs makes the surgery to risky. He is in ICU and not doing well at all. It is seems as though his health went wrong all of a sudden and faded quickly. I am holding on to hope, but I think I am one of the few. Please pray for him and his family. Thank you.

 

I wanted to share a verse with you that I read last week and again yesterday that is holding me up right now.

 

2 Corinthians 4:8-10

 

"We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandonded by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies."

 

I have been pressed, perplexed, hunted and knocked down...But am I not defeated because of what Jesus has done for me. I, by and through my suffering through these hard times, am being brought closer to Jesus and His death that brought me life. I can only try to seek him more, with more heart and more obedience.

 

I hope that my suffering and the words spoken through it will encourage you in your hard times.

 

God bless you.

There is No God (And You Know It)

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

It is worth noting that no one ever need identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (eighty-seven percent of the population) who claim to “never doubt the existence of God” should be obliged to present evidence for his existence -- and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

Consider: the city of New Orleans was recently destroyed by hurricane Katrina. At least a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and over a million have been displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: these poor people spent their lives in the company of an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm “of biblical proportions” would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. And yet, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that eighty percent of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran. Indeed, their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence: their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is -- and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If He exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion -- to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources -- is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.