No Risk...No Reward?

The other evening a friend of mine and I were having a discussion. He is 1 of 2 pals I have that have been interested in the faith for a long time, but are still having some trouble taking that step to give their lives to Christ. The long and short of it was that he didn't know who to believe (though the conversation lasted the better part of an hour and I was off-shift at the time...that's essentially what it came down to). He had tried reading the Bible but kept saying that it did not make sense. This was interesting food for thought, but I wasn't surprised. The Word itself says in 1 Corinthians 2:14:

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

This is one thing in particular I am fearful of. Non-Christians reading the Word in isolation don't know what to believe because they do not take the crucial step of believing in God first. It's like trying to come into contact with God without commitment. If your heart isn't geared towards truly understanding the character of God, how can you try to seek Him? Psalms 34:8 says "Taste and see that the LORD is good". God is and always will be a personal God.

Listening in on part 2 of "Stop Acting Like a Christian, Just Be One" at LifeChurch.tv provided some fresh insight on the matter. I have always held to the tenet that people make what they want of their lives. They'll advance all reasons for avoiding situations that they think might cause them harm, and advance all the benefits for the situations that they think might being them well-being (even if it really doesn't). In fact, it is often perceived that living the life of a Christian is "hard". The world says this and it's commonly believed so as a result many people will try to investigate the lifestyle while being on the outside. But what many people don't know is that...you don't change yourself when you become a Christian. Christ changes you. If you could change yourself--you wouldn't need Christ. The Word itself says:

"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:2)

The most difficult part of the process is surrendering control of one's life to Jesus. Draw closer to God and He will draw closer to You. Stay far from Him--stay on the other side of the street, look through the window or binoculars or whatever--and you're doing nothing but wasting time. We all have choices to make...and all of them involve a measure of risk. You can give up the world's carnality to save your life--or you can give up your life to embrace the world's point of view. Many of us avoid this because we don't deem it as a decision that needs to be made. But quite frankly, not taking this seriously means you've already made a decision--and it's one that won't benefit you in eternity. The time is ever closer. Where does your fealty lie?

Blessings.

Josh

Where the Grass is Greener...

I was over at LifeChurch.Tv two mornings ago listening in on the series "5 Ways to Wreck Your Life". Adultery was the focus of the topic under discussion (I mean it's in the Ten Commandments as a big "DO NOT"--so you know it's pretty serious). This is pretty pertinent IMHO especially since studies show that 65% of husbands and (interestingly enough) 55% of wives cheat. This is not how God intended us to live. The Word itself considers marriage to be both becoming "one flesh". How can a husband and wife who should live as one be so divided? As an old Jamaican proverb says, that would be "Two patty inna one different bag". In short, living that way makes no sense.

"When the grass starts to look greener..."

Craig (the pastor) made some pretty valid points all in all, but the one that stuck with me the most was essentially that of neglecting one's marriage. "When the grass starts to look greener on the other side...it's time to start watering your own yard!" When what's outside starts looking might fine, it's definitely time to start paying attention to what's yours. Being covetous will not solve the issue. Only a recommitment and recognition of the true worth of what you have and what the Lord saw fit to grace you with will make the difference. As Solomon said "Rejoice in the wife of your youth!" How many husbands delight in their wives and vice versa? Sure there will be the points of annoyance, but one must do well to remember that people in closed spaces will ALWAYS rub each other the wrong way at least some of the time. What's important is that you love one another enough to forgive and heal (I don't like saying "forget" because that's idealistic) when conflict presents itself.

Be joyful always. The vows you took to each other under God are real. The covenant is yours to keep--work at it, pray about it, do all that you can so that you may not be "disqualified" (to paraphrase Paul). You'll be surprised how the small things...an opening of the door, a love note, an embrace, just..a little more time alone...can help.

Blessings till next time.

Josh

Windows 7 RC1 -- week in review

Been running for a quite a while on the RC of Win7 but it wasn't until last week that I finally completed my migration (email, productivity suites, vendor apps, etc). The specs for the laptop I use for work:

Dell Latitude D620
Intel Centrino Duo (1.8 GHz)
1 GB DDR RAM
Intel GMA vid card (shared mem)

Personally, I don't much like M$, especially since the release of Vista. ....well, let me rephrase that. Things can't really get worse than ME (which was a bug masquerading as an OS) so I guess I must give them some props. They've come a long way despite the fact that they've sometimes dropped some commitments. I mean, I'm sure we all heard that WinFS was on it's way...where's that gone :S...? ZFS would probably knock it out of the water anyway (provided Sun doesn't get bitten by that patent infringement fiasco) because it works so well. But I digress...let's move on to the grading.

Aesthetics: 8/10
- Had to give it an 8 because while Aero is pretty and all it doesn't give me the bouncy goodness such as what one would experience with...say...Compiz for Linux. However, I am pleased that it runs so well with limited resources :) Oh by the way, there are now desktop slideshows available within. I was hoping I could see some Dream/animated backgrounds but oh well...can't have it perfect.

Ease of Use & Utility: 7/10
- M$ has striven to make the interface as consistent as possible with that of Vista while introducing some new features. There seems to be a Snipper tool but I have yet to really see a use for that. The Control Panel (which I STILL think didn't need to be changed from that of XP) isn't so bad but still required a bit of digging before I could find what I wanted. The Wi-Fi radio is pretty nifty and convenient as well.

Stability: 8/10
- No BSODs just yet, thankfully enough. Sometimes when it's paging the system locks up and your windows might do some interesting antics (going transparent and switching without intervention) but that's about the limit of any kookiness observed. I should mention that this happens whenever I open Outlook -_-. Otherwise, it's a wiz at memory management is supersedes its predecessor many times over.

Compatibility: 9/10
- No issues thus far...except with FireFox 3.x which seems to crash fairly often--even with nothing but a few tabs open. I didn't even have to look for drivers in order to run it...it dealt with almost everything straight out of the box. I should say here that some of Dell's utility apps didn't work normally upon installation (eg Quickset's little visuals no longer appear) but those weren't show-stoppers. I guess it's just important to keep in mind that unless your PC/laptop is made to be compatible with a Win7 upgrade, it's likely that your vendor's preinstalled apps may act a bit funky.

Other Comments:
- It's pretty hard on my battery--I guess it's because my D620 isn't a "newer system" so I won't get the benefit of the power savings touted by M$. No skin off my back though, I'm perfectly content.

Overall Goodness: 8/10
- Not bad at all, I'd actually recommend this to any Windows user out there (especially those tortured by Vista).

And that's about it for the week in review. See y'all next time.

Josh.

My Time with an Asus F8SP-X1

So it's almost been a year since I shelled out a hefty sum for this tidy little device. So far I can't say I've regretted it. NewEgg has it as a "deactivated item" -- not sure why...but all I can say is this was definitely one of my better decisions in life (yay!). So far it's handled everything I can throw at it (even Street Fighter IV!), and has withstood every test. I thank God I had the money to purchase it at the time ^^. Let's get down to business...

Aesthetics: Not extremely great but I do like the glossy finish (shows up fingerprints though).

CPU: It's one of those Core 2's (T5750)with reduced L1/L2 cache...but otherwise it works fairly well. If it's a bottleneck I can't say I've noticed it o_o

Memory: 3 Gigs of DDR2@667 MHz is pretty nice and comfortably covers both my leisure and academic needs.

Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650...sweet card. Runs HOT though--teh exhaust for this baby is on the right side so sometimes your mouse hand will get a little warm, but that's no problem. At work the AC is set so low that I sometimes actually use this to warm my hands ^_^

Sound: Not the best and can be somewhat tinny. Doesn't bother me though, we all can't have it perfect on a low budget.

All in all, it's a pretty sweet machine--faithfully chugging along. Gotta love it.

Josh.

Golden Compass

Man, I'm a sucker for good storytelling. I just thought a couple of you all may be interested in the following (despite the obvious pagan references to witches--which has never bothered me in the slightest, after all what were we given imaginations for?). Found the following trailer:

Of Christianity and Rock

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. - 1 Corinthians 12:4

It goes without saying that no two humans are exactly alike. Among the 6.1 billion people here on this Earth, it's a surety that you'll find shared characteristics, but in terms of whole equality that's a definite negative. It is also true that we have certain abilities, the degrees and expression of which are peculiar to us and only to us. I make reference of course to our talents, the little things we have a knack for doing, like drawing, writing, playing sports, public speaking, and a myriad of others that I, for lack of time, cannot mention here. On the other side of the coin, there are also things we like to perceive, whether it be artwork, music, literature and so forth (which are indubitably the products of someone else's talents). So we produce via our own talents for the enjoyment and appreciation of those that prefer to consume them. An interesting cycle.

Let's narrow it down a bit and talk to music. Nowadays music is wide and varied, coming from prehistoric natural sounds, to the ancient to the medieval to the dispersal of tradition in favour of diversity. No longer do we listen to music that's bound by cultural lines as it were in the past, nowadays the lines are blurred by a seeming diffusion of styles across borders according to what fresh new innovative minds decide to incorporate into their own compositions. It's only natural that some of these will take off and others will not, especially with the finding of instruments that give off a particular feel that's well suited to what is being produced. If I seemed to be going off on a tangent before, I hope where I'm heading is slowly becoming clear. And while I'm at it I think I'll dispense with the bland essay-type writing that I seem to have been pursuing for the past 289 words...good gravy I think I'm turning into one of those old philosophers. Reading some of those texts you immediately get a picture of a dark and musty old room filled with cobwebs and the scent of several melting candles providing light for the author. Yikes.

Now to get to the point for the sake your time and mine, I'll pose the essential question: "What's up with Christianity and Rock Music??" The rock music I'm referring to here is not that of the secular world--because Lord knows there are some pretty scary/disturbing ones out there (Nine-Inch Nails...hint-hint). I enjoy some of the musical backdrops however, and some of them have wicked-cool guitar tones all wrapped up in them (Big Machine by the Goo Goo Dolls is a prime example). However, the lyrics usually spoil everything--and in some cases I don't even know what these people are trying to express. There was a point at which people thought rockers were just kids who loved singing songs about being angry with their parents--and after my first encounter with their music I was almost inclined to believe the same. But propaganda aside, the main thing here is that one can enjoy a song purely for its instruments and not for the vocals. Having done breakdancing in the past, I can attest to the truth of that--a piece of hip-hop or electronica may be playing and you're following not the words of the song, but rather the rhythm and tempo and matching those to the execution of the breaks. You don't perceive the words anymore--all you perceive is a flow on the beat which the cadence of the words tends to augment. For example, I have no idea what Joe Budden says in "Pump It Up"...but he flowed so well on the beat that dancing to it was a joy ^______^. I think we played that at least once at every session for over a month actually o_O. In any event, dancing to hip-hop doesn't make me want to be a part of that culture I only like the backbeats. Perhaps if the words were more meaningful I'd actually listen to them. It follows then that if you were to give me the same backbeat which I already like, with words that are sending a message, that my ears will perk up and I'll get interested. This is the one thing that we as Christians don't seem to understand--what did the Word say? Moreover, what are we as Christians supposed to do, if not capture everything and make all such things submissive to Christ? Does that not also include music?

Music in and of itself is not evil. It can be associated with evil things however, and that makes all the difference. There is no difference between the sweet subtle melodies of a hymn and the cacophonous sounds of guitar storms other than what you perceive to be your preference (or lack thereof). Check out the Anglican/Catholic hymn 'O Jesu I have promised' and DC-Talk's rock gospel 'Jesus Freak' and you'll get what I'm saying. There's also no question that we tend to fall under the influence of what we like--it's pretty obvious. Ask any gamehead (cough, cough, not I >_>) and you'll see. You get enthusiastic about those things because they appeal to you. So now, let's be shrewd. We've got a Great Commission given to us at the end of Matthew which we must fulfil. So the point here is that we need to find more creative ways of spreading the gospel--in other words, by using our talents. If someone's enthusiasm doesn't lie with the organ, but does lie with the electric guitar, then that person has as much right to praise God with it as the organist does. Both instruments, and more importantly, both persons are being submissive to God, they're just praising him the best way they know how--by doing what they're best at for his sake. By using their talents they can then reach out to other people that have similar likings and tastes in music as they do, and who knows, before you know it a following begins. It's not to say that everyone that hears their music will necessarily be inspired to follow Christ...because once they get the Word out there, it's all up to God. After all, we don't know that person's heart, but He does. His Truth is what draws people...we're just the messengers.

Remember, the measure of a man lies in his heart. It's his courage and faith to be effective, and most importantly, the love that he has for God and His children that defines him. Don't be a flapper. We're all called to serve with all our hearts and minds, so let us not be content to be less than what we really are: the Sons and Daughters of a King.

Till next time.

Blessings!

PS:
'The Measure of a Man' by 4Him is a very good song...I encourage you all to take a listen when you have the time. Now if only I could remember what World of Worship CD it's on...

Proverbs...

Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise. Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:20-21)

This is why I love the book of Proverbs. Direct, and to the point in its own poetic way. How many of us lean to our own, fallible understanding on a daily basis? How many times do we rush into things without so much as a word of prayer to the one who holds our lives in His hands? Doesn't even make sense to deny it, we all have done it. Good thing our Father loves us, and understands our failings.

I've been dissatisfied for a good while now. Funniest thing is I didn't even realise it. So much for thinking that introspection was one of my strong points -_-. In any case, it's strange because I had such enthusiasm for what I was doing all through school--and now that I'm in the real world, I suppose it's not all I thought it would be. This is perhaps a classic case of depending on the world to meet needs that only God can fulfil--but at the same time that's not quite it. It's something about me, something about my own process of construction that's the problem. This reminds me of a time when my artistic ability became stagnate, and I would despair for hours wondering why I would never improve. Of course the answer was clear, I had outgrown that artistic stage, but it was almost as though in my mind I had reached the top--my limit so to speak. I was, for all intents and purposes, blind to what would come next. I recall speaking with York (best friend) about it once, sitting on a bench under that (accursed) mango tree where we used to wait for our parents. He said he was disappointed that I thought that. That's one thing I enjoyed about our bond--there was no need to sugar-coat things, because the truth was always the truth. No amount of buttering made it otherwise...that would only make it lose its value. Truths are hard, rarely soft.

And consequently I guess one truth I have to face is that I've come full circle--the only difference now is that I'm seeing a bit more clearly than when I was 16. I'm wondering where else to go now when there's a veritable sea in front of me. There's an island somewhere out there that will offer me something new--but I can't see it. What do I choose? Do I dive in as Steven Curtis Chapman sings...or do I remain within the comfortable boundaries of land? I cannot remain in this same position, I would merely drown in my own complacency. I want more--wisdom, faith, perseverance, everything. If only I could be more aggressive about it and not procrastinate all the time, then maybe I'd have gotten somewhere between 16 and now. But I suppose, we fall down so that we learn lessons about getting up. And that's where I am. There's a plan for me, as there's a plan for all of us. But once we start going forward, we must never go back. Never. Many of us stick at that decision and it's no wonder why. The commitment seems too huge. But our God has promised us that he has plans to prosper us and give us a hope and a future. There is no harm in Him. He didn't promise comfort, but He promised Grace, and that's all we will ever need.

...The question is...have you got that mustard seed? Plant it because Christ is at work within you.

As my supervisor often quotes when she's managed to solve a problem: "Jah-jah people forward ever, backward never!" I always get a good vibe hearing that. I think I'll end on that note.

Blessings!