God’s Universities

I saw a sign today. It was one of those church marquee signs. I was riding to work with a fellow co-worker (He picks me up everyday. Car-pooling. I wish I could say that I do it for the environment. That would be a lie.) who was listening to someone teaching on the radio. I saw the sign, had this immediate knee-jerk reaction (surprised me really), and exclaimed, “Oh, No!. Un-uh!.” My friend is trying to figure out why I’m yelling at the guy on the radio. I explained that it had nothing to do with that.

So, “Why all the drama?” you may ask. Here is the quote from the marquee, “Our Adversities are God’s Universities.” No big deal right?

Well, as of late is it. With what I have learned in the past year and a half, it just isn’t okay anymore.

On the surface it is just a nice (albeit cliché) phrase. It is just trying to tell people, when things suck, it is ok, God is teaching you something………… (pllltttttt).

Sidenote, I am amazed at the internal response I have to that statement, even just explaining it fills me with intense emotion. I am not angry. I am upset at the underlying mentality that I believed for almost my whole life.

The problem with the statement is the underlying message. A message that the Christians have been taught for years and years. The message is that God plans bad things for us to teach us good. We believe that God, Our Good Father, does terrible, terrible things for our greater good. Even our culture believes that almost every huge catastrophic event is from God. (i.e. - Earthquake = Act of God.)

That is not God. It is not His Will that terrible things happen. I know that this is in contrast to so many people’s belief, but I know now that this isn’t true. I am sure that others of Marketing Dilemma will have post and comments that will be in this direction at times, but for now, I am going to write a post or two about this subject. This was the teaser. Your taste will be satisfied more fully later.

Until the next time.

Ben Stein - Expelled

Wow. It has been like a year since I have written in here. I will get better at this I promise. I like to write…. It just isn’t in my patterns yet. If you aren’t in my patterns, then you get unintentionally left out. I don’t mean to. It’s nothing personal. I am just very habitual…..

Anyway, to the point. I saw a great movie tonight. Not my typical movie style to see. I have friends that are indie. I have friends that are documentary buffs. I am not one of those. I am plain old action, adventure, good story, romance, comedy, and (the most extreme genre I subscribe to is:) sci-fi. I do love sci-fi. This was a documentary style movie by Ben Stein. The name of the movie is Expelled. It was very intriguing. It is one of those films that will make a lot of people mad. Some will be mad because they are incapable of having their beliefs shaken (they don’t like questions). Some will be mad because they didn’t know our freedoms were being infringed upon so greatly.

I was mostly just amazed. I was amazed to listen to some of the most learned people in the world not form adequate arguments for their beliefs. I was amazed when people were caught in outright lies and fumbled while trying to back-pedal. I was amazed at Richard Dawkins. What an intelligent idiot. He was the most convincing part of the film for Intelligent Design. He just didn’t mean to be.

The basic premise of the movie is that the scientific community is not allowing freedom of speech. They aren’t a democracy, they are more like a communist state that silences any voice that asks questions against the mainstream. There is a lot more too it than that, and I may describe it more later. I don’t want to give the whole thing away,though, but I do need to say this. You really should see this film. It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree. I am fine with that. The purpose isn’t to convince you about one belief. The purpose is to point out that we are losing our freedoms. Freedoms that many of us have died for. We must do something about it.

See the film. Make up your own mind. Tell others to see it to.

That’s all for now, folks.

Of Highland Cow

So in the bottom right hand corner of my site is a nifty little flickr gadget thing. It normally pulls random pictures from flickr, but…….. I know basically nothing about php. I know a little about html. Luckily, I am not afraid to mess with stuff. So I happened upon the right section to change the tags it was searching for, and voilà…. Highland Cows. (Well, by the time you are reading this, it may no longer be highland cows. It may be turkish rats or cheese representations of the Leaning Tower - I like that one.)

So why highland cows? It reminds me of getting to travel around Scotland and England with my wife when we were first married. We were near Loch Ness, and on the tour bus stopped to show us their native cows. Strange critters. Really just like any other cow, but with long brown fur. Kind of like if Chewbacca matted with a dairy cow. Anyway, they stuck out in my head because they were so unexpected.

Well, that was all. I just thought they were cool, and that I would share that will all of you out there.

Where is the Light?

I was talking with one of my dear friends at work today, and a fire that has been building in me was stirred afresh. A bit of backstory. For as long as I can remember, I have had a fascination with healing. I have longed to be a conduit for God to show His power in the lives of people. I have seen hurt and sickness and pain, and ached to see it changed. This is a desire of my heart. I have also been prayed for / told / prophesied over that I had the gift of healing.

So one day (at least 4 to 6 years ago, I think. Man that’s pathetic that I have taken this long.) I was talking to God about this and he told me the first step for me was to look up every verse in Bible that was about healing or faith. I never did this. I have to do this.

So back to now, for the past month I have had this building desire to see this particular woman in the church healed. She has been in a wheel chair for as long as I know. She has some kind of muscular disease, and is very crippled. I have been praying quietly behind her in the church every Sunday. This past Sunday she went up to the front for healing, and I actually went and prayed for her. Nothing visible happened. That’s part of the point of this post.

Here’s the other part, I think a large part of what hinders the move of God in the lives of Believers (who actually believe that God can move now - that’s a whole different discussion) is the lack of light that we show. We really any different than everyone else. We do ‘most’ of the same things. We see the same movies. We listen to the same music. We enjoy the same things. (I am not telling you not to see movies or listen to music. Don’t major on the wrong things here.) Here’s the thing. We don’t stand out. We don’t show light in dark places. We are in the world and of the world. So, since there is nothing different about us, why would God move through us to show the lost and hurting and dying that they should keep living the same way. If there is nothing for God to draw attention to, then why would He. Maybe I am way off here. Please feel free to tell me I am a wacko. I am open to some other well thought out perspectives.

So how do we show light? How can we be visibly and noticeably different, so that they call us names like ‘the Way’? I am not sure yet. I know that I must work continually at being the pure and devoted man of God that I am called to be. I know that compromise must be rooted out in my life.

I also know that I need to walk in power. That the Power of God has to show. One thing I will say here, that woman WILL be healed. She will walk, and be totally a new person. Just wait. (Dang I’m crazy to say that. Good.)

A Time to Change

This is an interesting month here at the Ayers household. If you don’t know anything about me, there is quite some back story that may be necessary (unfortunately for you, that isn’t going to happen right now.) There has been quite a few prophetic words from people I trust about this year being a year of change and an ending of cycles. At first I felt very outside of this whole thing. People were seeing change or at least feeling it. I was kind of just here.

Then the week before March happened. It was like an awakening / cumination event. There were three different things that all came together. The first event actually happened on Sunday, February 18th. A spiritual leader / mother in my life approached me at church and basically read my mail. It was a bit frightening in one sense (wow, God, thanks for all the privacy), and very freeing in another. I was quite overwhelmed that God would take the time of someone who could be helping others a lot (and has helped others tremendously) to tell me to get my life together. I felt a bit like David when Nathan came to tell him about his adultering and murdering. Very sad, very humbled, but very restored (eventually). Anyway, so that was event one - Get Pure stupid, it’s time.

The second and third culminating events basically happened at the same time. The second one involves me changing the way I eat and my very sedentary lifestyle. It was something I was working up to, by finally made the commitment and the choices to do it starting March 1st. So that was event two - Get fit lazy.

The third was brought on by my boss (a large Dutch man I might add) giving me an audio book by a man named Dave Ramsey. He had recently gone to his seminar, and was very impressed. I rarely take the time to read of listen to things that improve my life (something that I am also changing), but this one called me. It was titled, Your Total Money Makeover, and is very impressive. If you ever want to know how to make deliberate choices to be financially healthy, and eventually wealthy, this is the book for you. He is intense, and doesn’t back down. It goes completely against the “American Way” of doing things, which is good since I am sick of how badly we handle the resource of money in our lives here. Almost everyone I know lives right on the edge of total meltdown, financially. It is terrifying, and the system here just propagates it. Anyway, that was event three - get Free dork, you can.

All of that to say, I am very excited to see where all of this goes. This weekend was kind of a step back, but we made great strides this past week, and will do more so this coming week. My goal for the week is to have the week go at least as well in these areas as the past week did, and to stick to it on the weekend.

This year holds great potential. I have seen it in many of the people around me. One of my friends is getting through some emotional hang-ups that he has always had. He is growing, and is more open to change this year than I have ever seen him. I am very proud of him. Some other friends of mine are moving into great areas of financial possibilities. I can feel it in the atmosphere. If you want to change this year, you can. If you want to be free from bad cycles in your life, you can. Jesus will help you, if you ask. Don’t waste this time. I am afraid the consequences of not walking in new things and not getting rid of bad old things will be very damaging (more than normal).

Well, that is my current state of life. I hope your current state of life is making you grow and become better as well. Blessings.

Here we go.

So this is my blog. I just set it up, and it was a tiny adventure to do. I am ok at techie type stuff, but this was new for me. I am actually very young in the web content creation world, but so what. I hope you enjoy what develops here over time. I hope that it can challenge you, make you think, or at least entertain you sometimes. Please feel free to drop by again.