Christmas Thoughts

 

The Lord is a wonderful Lord, isn’t He? Here we are: poor, wretched, miserable, sinful conglomeration of dust that cannot survive without Him to keep us going (“…and by Him all things consist.” Colossians 1:17b). We cannot even worship Him without His help. Pretty pitiful, huh? Here He is: Glorious, Marvelous, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Wonderful, and Awesome Lord of lords, King of kings, and Sustainer of all life. Quite the contrast, huh?

Sometimes, I think we forget how tiny and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. The reason for this is that the Creator of the world loves us and thus makes us important. But, I think it’s a good thing to step back and take a look and see that WE ARE NOTHING without Him. So, I’m going to do my best to accomplish that task with a few facts:

First, let’s get in our head as much as possible how much 1 billion is:

1 billion minutes ago Revelations was just written and the Roman Empire was doing great.

1 billion hours ago Creation week wasn’t even close to happening.

It would take approximately 32 years of non-stop counting for someone to count to 1 billion.

 

So, now that we have a slightly concrete idea on the immensity of that number:

According to worldometers.info, at 11:27 p.m. on 12/23/12, there are 7,087,167,870 people on the planet. You are 1 of that number. And all of the other 7,087,167,869  people all have the same feelings, hurts, and cares that you have. Yet, He cares for you…

You take up 0.00000000000096139 (that's decimal billions haha) of a world that is full of life and day and night singing their praises to Him. Yet, He cares for you…

The earth where all this is happening is a mere speck in the midst of the hugeness of our Solar System. Scientists estimate that there are 200 BILLION solar or planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy. And then, they estimate that there are more than 100 BILLION galaxies (!!!) in the universe. Wow. And yet, He cares for you…

He cares. HE. CARES. It’s an unbelievable, amazing thing. And He cares so much, that He came down to be born as a baby to a poor, underprivileged family in the little town of Bethlehem, knowing what was waiting for Him on this earth. And then, He lived a life, serving people every day. And then, He died a painful, horrible death. And He did this to give you the opportunity to live with Him forever. Now that is worth celebrating. And not just on Christmas, but every single day.

 

What Would You Do for a King?

Bill Cantos

What would you do for a king

 If He won all the battles He went out to fight

 And returned as a hero on a starlit night to a cheering crowd...

 Would it make you proud?

 And what would you do for a king

 If He kept every promise that He'd ever made

 Would you get out the tickertape and lead a parade, a society ball...

 Or would you care at all?

 Kings always seemed to me as such grand, imposing men

 So full of stature, full of power

 Such great authority in every word they say

 I never thought I was quite the type

 But I'd still love to meet one someday

 So what would you do for a king

 If He came to your door, would you ask Him in

 Would you tell Him how much you admired Him

 Do you think you'd dare

 Or would you be to scared?

 Most king's don't seem to know much about the common man

 So far removed and set apart

 I cheer with thousands, we blend into a roar

 Another face in an endless crowd

 Is that all I really am, just one more...

 So what would you do for a king

 If He saw you fishing out by the sea

 And He walked up to you and said "Follow me - It's time you know"

 Do you think you'd go?

 And what would you do for a king

 If He took off his crown and agreed to die

 And as you tried to understand it, He looked you in the eye and said,

 "This is for you"

 Well, what would you do?

Merry Christmas all!! :)

Servants of the Lord

Psalm 123:1 and 2
"To You I lift up my eyes, O You who are enthroned in the heavens!
Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
So our eyes look to the LORD our God,
Until He is gracious to us."

I read that verse last week in the book The Heavenly Man, which is an autobiography about the Chinese Christian leader Brother Yun. It's a verse that he quoted to himself over and over again while undergoing extreme torture and persecution in a Chinese prison (by the way, I highly recommend the book to those of you who want to read a story about a devoted Christ follower.)

I know one thing. I want this to be my testimony that I can say from my heart.

So, I've been thinking about the "servant/slave- Christ follower" analogy. "As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master..." A servant is required to always be looking to his master for instruction. For example, once a job is completed, he returns to his master to ask, "What would you have me do next?" And, if he wanted to stay in his master's good graces, he would go and do whatever it was his master asked of him. That's the way that we should look to the Lord! We should be waiting on Him, on His will, ready to jump at His commands at all times. And I'm not talking about the big things. Those are the issues that most of us are wanting to participate in. I mean in the everyday, nitty gritty things. For me, that means when I come home from work, will I ask God, now what do you want? As I was about to write this paragraph, I thought, "Ryan, here you are writing a blog post about seeking God's direction, and you haven't even asked Him what He wanted you to do with this time." lol He brings conviction! So, I stopped and asked Him. Rachel was at the store with her sisters, Nathan was asleep. I thought this was the perfect time for a blog post. Well, as soon as I asked Him the dishes came to mind. Just as quickly my fleshly aversion to washing dishes also rose up. Isn't it crazy? "For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." Ephesians 5:17 How true!

Another way that a slave would need to look to his master's hand is for his sustenance. It's the only way he could live! You know, most of us husbands/fathers, wives/mothers, brothers/sisters would do whatever it took to provide for our families physically. We would clean out septic tanks if need be (no offense to you septic cleaners ;)! We would do the most disgusting, repulsive, exhausting things if need be before we would see our families starve or go without housing. But, to what lengths are we willing to go for the spiritual provision of our families? Just think about it a bit.

There's many other ways that this analogy can be applied. Think about it for a while. It's rather enlightening to our walk with God and how our relationship with Him should be. He makes us His sons. But, He has purchased our lives at a high price. How could we give Him any less than our eternal service?

Family pictures!

Little Nathan... :)

Family pictures!

I love this picture, it's so sweet.

Me and my precious little boy.. I love him so much!

Engagement picture. Sweet memories.

This one's my favorite

In love... The happy couple and their adorable sweet little baby!

"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands, serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with   singing, know ye, that the Lord He is God! It is He that hath made us and not we are selves, we are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise, be thankful unto Him, and bless His name! For the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His TRUTH endureth to all generations." Those are some awesome verses! We serve an awesome God. Praise Him! Lets practice what this verse is saying; be joyful, thankful, and Bless His wonderful Name!

I'm going to be adding pictures of all he aunts and uncles grandparents and so on, real soon here. Keep a lookout for them! God bless you all! Lets not forget to put God  before us today, and bless His name! :)

More pictures of baby boy!

How precious...

Hi :)

He looks so cuddly in this one.

His eyes are getting so blue!

 Nathan is doing well! He's growing like a weed; he is 7 pounds and 14 ounces today! We can't get over how fast he's growing! Time sure flies by us fast. Cherish every moment, because soon he won't be a tiny little baby anymore...

My Thoughts of the Day (so far, anyways)

My amazing wife and our son.

Read in Acts 1 today. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to see Jesus levitating up to heaven. The amazement and awe would just be amazing. Rachel brought up a good point on how that would be scary at the same time. Here’s Jesus, who you have followed for 3 years, leaving you and telling you that you’re gonna be persecuted and killed most likely, but you MUST spread the Word about Him. That goes to show you just how much they all loved and believed in Him. If they hadn’t, they would never have done that. They would have just fallen away at the first sign of persecution. They had nothing to gain by preaching the Gospel. It didn’t make them rich, it didn’t make them powerful. Quite the opposite, actually!

Also, the followers were asking Jesus if He was going to restore the kingdom to the Jews. His reply? “Don’t worry about it. It’s in the Father’s hands and we don’t need to waste our time trying to find out things that He doesn’t want us to know. Instead, I will be sending the Holy Spirit to fill you, and you need to focus on spreading the Good News of My Gospel to all the lands.” (That’s my paraphrase of what God spoke to me through that passage today; the passage is Acts 1:6-7) In correlation, does that mean that maybe we shouldn't spend so much time trying to figure out if the end of the world is actually going to be this year or 10 years or 100 years from now, or if the USA is actually “Babylon the Great”, or maybe even who's going to win this presidential election? I'm not saying I know the answers; I'm just asking. I’ll let you decide.

Jesus cares about people. He loves them. Don’t ever forget that.

Pictures of Nathan!

"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, 
coming down from the Father of lights, 
with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." 

Here he is at two weeks.
All bright-eyed and alert!

His first night Home.

Nathan's baby shower cake.
(Made by my sister Leah.)

One week and two days old here.
It's amazing at how fast he's growing!

He is such a sweetie! Ryan and I love him very much!

We're so thankful for him.

God sure blessed us in so many ways.

Not only is Nathan alive and with us, but he's a strong healthy little guy.

Our prayer is that we will raise little Nathan up to be God's devoted servant.

And thathe would be a man after God's heart.

"For this boy I prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition

which I asked of Him. So I have dedicated

him to the Lord; as long as he lives he is dedicated to the Lord."

  (1 Samuel 1:27)

Nathan, and Testimonies

Hey everyone! We decided to start this blog a few days before Rachel had to go into the hospital because of pre-eclampsia complications (So this first post is about our first baby; cool, huh?) We've had this blog up and running for a week and a half with no post on it and no time to even think about it. But, without further ado, here it is.

As I mentioned, Rachel had to make a quick trip into the hospital. There she was induced into labor and gave us our beautiful little son, Nathan Scott. She did an amazing job. Nathan weighed 4 pounds 14 ounces and was 18 inches long. He was born February 11, 2012, at 4:14 a.m. And I hate to dissapoint all of you other parents out there, but he is the cutest little guy ever. :P Everyone in the hospital called him a "little peanut". lol


Rachel's midwife had come over on Wednesday and checked Rachel's blood pressure, and it was quite high. So, she took some blood samples and sent them in to be tested, to see if there were any possible complications happening. Thursday she got the results back. They were definitely saying "pre-eclampsia". She reccomended that we go into the hospital right away. We had a decision to make. Do we go in while everything is going ok and induce labor (Nathan was 37 weeks on Tuesday so there was no danger to him). Or we could try to wait it out and see if everything would be ok. We prayed about it and decided to head in.

When we got there, the hospital staff decided to stabilize her blood pressure and then induce her into labor. Rachel's blood pressure was 170/102 (normal is 120/80, so that's dangerously high.) They got her stabilized, and then started the pitocin. The labor went really well, and was quick.

God was with us! There were a couple of times when it seemed like things were really going to be bad, but let me tell you guys, we serve an awesome God. He worked everything out so that it just worked out perfectly. It would take me hours to write out everything that He did for us in that hospital, and even looking back, over the whole pregnancy that made sure that we had a perfectly healthy little boy and a perfectly healthy mother. If we see you in person, ask Rachel or me, and we'd be happy to tell you these things!


A little change of direction here. I was reading in 1 Corinthians yesterday and read this: "And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2:1-2) So, this is how Paul, one of if not the greatest missionary of all time, told people about Christ. He didn't have all kinds of fancy words, he wasn't speaking over their heads in scholarly language, he just pointed them to Jesus. This is huge, guys. This applies to how we raise our children, how we witness to others, even how we view ourselves. We don't need to be "know-it-alls". All you need is to be saved by Jesus Christ and have His power in your life. Just tell them your testimony. Tell them how He has worked in your life. Show them the "demonstration of the Spirit and of power" that He is capable of. Have you overcome an addiction? Tell them! Has He worked physical miracles for you? Tell them! Has He saved you from eternal death? Tell them! Do they come to you with a question about life or how to deal with something? Tell them how to deal with it! Tell them! Know Jesus and His saving power in front of them. Don't be afraid!

When people see the power if Christ in you life, they want it. It's not difficult. Just know Jesus and Him crucified. Just know His saving power, and live it out. And be ready to share with others what Jesus has done in your life.

We will post more pics of Nathan up here soon. I promise, there will be lots of pics :)