Second Life was a online 3D interactive world that was billed as “If you don’t like the way your life is going, you can have a Second Life”. When I joined the game, it was primarily a way to learn to make 3D Models. I gave the game a week, and I took to building in the interface rather quickly.

I was able to make real money by playing this game, and it was a “much needed escape”. I was in deep…

One day Father God in all His love, showed me that I had allowed certain people on the game to pull me away from where He wanted me to go. I made the decision to leave the game, but found that it had become an addiction.

The game in itself wasn’t the addiction, but it was the need for the people in that game that was. I really had no one to talk to outside Second Life, or so it seemed. I remember the word from God saying that I had allowed myself to become so engrained in the relationships, that He was unable to get to me the relationships that I really needed.

Building in the game was so much fun, and the creative outlet would help me visualize designs. I used to say that if there was a way to make the models, without the game, I would love to see it. I did without for 3+ years, and Father God has given me a Real Life love in the form of my beautiful wife, Mary. Mary has helped me move so much further into the will of God than anyone else has.

A while back, I saw that Second Life was out there as a “Standalone Version”, and I installed it. I was able to move through the virtual world, and build the 3D Models that I like. I was even able to get the kids on, and we all build as a family.

I no longer have to pay to use the tools, and I can make as many Estates as I want (or as many as the old anchor of a computer can hold, and so far that is 7).

Because I allowed The Lord to pull me away so that He could strip away the unhealthy parts, He saw fit to bring back a tool that I can use in the future.

I serve a loving and faithful God!!!

It is wild that the vision for planting a church in Arnaudville came to me back in February, and here we are with our first monthly Sunday Morning Service less than 23 hours away. I will not lie and say that I haven’t been coming against doubt in myself and my abilities, but I also will not lie and deny the Lord His due praise for all the miracles that have been happening along the way.

All the pictures below are God answering prayers…

Here are some testimonies:

Our Non-Profit Corporation cost less than $100 (Bylaws and all)

Last monday we were given speakers to complete our Sound System (all portable)

Our office has the computer, printer, and accounting software

We have our praise and worship videos ready with a projector

We are renting a place (will seat 25) for $125/month (all inclusive)

We were invited to 2 community events to do outreaches

We were able to purchase 100 New Testaments to give at outreaches

We have office and church supplies

We have a mailing address and a checking account

The name and the logo design was given by God

We do have some needs, but let me tell you that they seem very small compared to how much we have been blessed. We are so grateful and rejoice for every step of this process.

Thank you Father God or being our provider

When I accepted the calling to start a church, there were things that I knew I needed God’s help in. He called me, and it was about Him, so I needed His help.

The Lord gave me words to pray for, and as I prayed them (I looked up the words in scripture, and prayed the scriptures) I found that there was a structure to accomplishing everything that God  calls us to do.

At the top, the word is “Calling”, and there are two columns under it. The Column on the left is “Faith” and the Column on the right is “Action”.

The Calling: Father God puts the good desires into our hearts, so He is working for them. He will not call you to do what you can not do, and because this is His doing, it is all about Him.

Faith:
The Vision: He shows you where He wants you to go to get to the calling.
The Direction: He is the one that leads by every step to get there.
The Message: He gives you the words to say, or the actions to do, to bring in the calling.
The Method: God is the one that shows how to say the words or do the actions.

Action:
The Ability: Father God gives you the skills necessary to accomplish the calling.
The Resources: He provides you with the tools to work on the calling.
The Favor: He gives you the people that you need for support.
The Income: He supplies everything necessary to do His will.

Every Desire that is given by God requires Faith and Action, all of which He gives to us to do through the Blood of Jesus.

We serve a great God!

As I walked through the dream (it seemed to take place in a huge cavern with rock formations instead of an open sky. I walked through an alley where I saw this writing (I couldn’t read it’s meaning) that glowed. Some of the writing seemed to be on walls and some was on a metal plate that was cut out with a plasma torch. No matter where the writing was, the outer edges had a glow effect and it seemed to be foreign to the area I was in.

I made my way to an open area (it resembled the center of a race track) where I saw total chaos. Cars were going around the track at high speeds, and where the embankment was, it seemed to be too steep of an angle. One after the other race cars were flying off the edge of the oval’s embankment, and I found myself asking why the drivers didn’t see what was happening to the cars in front of them. I found myself wondering why they would just follow each other to their own deaths just for a race.

I looked higher, and it seemed that people were falling to their death in droves as the trains (I saw every kind of train and subway car) were colliding into each other. It was a sick feeling to see the bodies fall onto the race track below where the racers were hitting them before their own death over the embankment. I thought to myself that it was odd to see an old steam locomotive running along tracks (like a subway car would run on) that were above the race track.

I noticed that there were also bodies falling onto the trains from the sky. When I looked higher, I saw bodies falling from airplanes of all kinds that were crashing into each other. It seemed that some people were trying to bail out of the trains and planes, but it was too late for them. Their limp bodies were all twisted as they hit the ground, and I wondered why the survivors seemed to be trying to get back to the places they fell from.

A man came to me (who I perceived to be Jesus), and I followed Him to this smaller cave (room). There were people following Him into this room, and He instructed us to be patient and rest. There were these bunk cots all over and I climbed into one and waited for Him to return.

Suddenly He came to my bunk and spoke directly to me (or so it felt like), and told me that it was time to go. I followed Him down this corridor, but realized that I had left my shoes back at the bunk. I asked Him if I needed to be wearing shoes where we were going, but He didn’t answer. I remember laughing at myself saying “well I guess I don’t need shoes”.

It seemed as if I was directly behind Jesus, but in reality we were all behind Him (even though the corridor was very narrow). As we exited the corridor, we came into this huge arena in this large cave. Jesus turned to me and told me to keep going while He waited for the last person to arrive out of the corridor.

We walked down this aisle (it seemed like He was still walking with me) towards this stage that seemed to be in the middle, but was built as if it were in a corner. At the corner of the stage was a pit of fire and a black curtain behind it.

When I walked onto the stage, I thought to myself that this looked like an “end-times” thing where I would have to die for my faith in Jesus. I said almost laughing that it didn’t matter because I had just seen Him and the fiery pit didn’t seem so scary. I knew I wouldn’t deny the truth (it seemed like the matter was settled in my heart, and having it settled took away all fear).

There were so many people in the arena that were sitting in chairs looking at the stage, but they were all silent. In fact I wondered if they were real or not or even dead or not. There was a being that came to me, and asked me if I was ready to deny Jesus. I said that I wasn’t because I had just been with Him. How can I deny when I just spent time with Him? It seemed all to silly to me.

The being told me to go to the edge of the pit and turn and face the crowd, and I did so without fear. It was like I wasn’t being forced to this pit, but I went willingly to prove my faith in Jesus.The flames were so high and I saw that the moment it would hit them I would be instantly dead, but I felt no heat from them.

I was then instructed to step back into the flame (it seemed like a joke that they were so unwilling to go near the pit themselves to bring me there), and I closed my eyes and stepped back. I never had a sensation of falling, but as I stepped back off the edge I immediately felt hands catch me and pull me back as if through the curtain backdrop behind the pit.

As the hands caught me and pulled me through the blackness I heard a soft voice say, “… ahhh… Gene!”

When I heard the voice I immediately knew that He knew me, and as I opened my eyes and turned to Him saying “Lord”, I woke up…

Every so often I come across a Biblical debate that I choose to not be a part of, simply because it has no benefit to the building of the Kingdom of God. I can understand the pursuit of the deeper meanings of the Word of God, but I don’t understand why people choose to “debate” to the point that they tear down the “faith” of a fellow Christian just to prove a point.

There are two ways to look at the Scripture… 1)determine the letter of the law 2)understand the Spirit of the law.

The trap that the pharisees got in to, was the constant bickering about how to interpret the letter of the law. The argument caused them to take the original Books of Moses and debate them to the point that they no longer understood what the Spirit of the Law stood for. When Jesus told them that “All of the law is this, love your neighbor as yourself”, He was redirecting them back to what God originally said.

They had argued about the single word to the point that they no longer knew what to believe, and they lost sight of the original meaning. They had in essence lost the concept of “love your neighbor”, and adapted the concept of use the law to beat down your neighbor.

If “all of the law” is Love, then the Bible really isn’t meant to be a law book, but it is meant to be a Love Letter to us.

When I was a kid, my mom would write notes to me and put them in my lunchbox. They would say things like “Gene, I love you and want you to try to learn something new today at school”. She would write notes because her love for me caused her to want to see me grow, and by learning something at school I would grow. It is a simple concept.

My mom would have been upset if I had taken the note she left me, brought it to my sister, and demanded that she recite one thing she learned. It would have not been her intention for me to tell my sister that if she didn’t learn anything, then mom wouldn’t let her live with us anymore.

It sickens God when Believers use His Love Letter as a way to cause other Believers to doubt. As a Christian who is saved by grace and love, we need to allow the same towards others.

There is a rule that I keep when it comes to studying the Word of God:

The letter of the law is for my personal growth, and the spirit of the letter of love is for the way I treat others.

The Scripture tells us to consider others better than ourselves, and that means that we are to understand the Spirit of God’s Word before we try to look at the Letter of it. If the letter tells you anything that goes against what the Spirit says, then it is plain wrong.

God’s Word comes in many different translations and paraphrases because He wants us to understand how much He loves us. I can tell my wife in German that I love her everyday, but if she doesn’t speak German she will just think I am spitting on her.

We ought to be ashamed when we cause the world to think that God is spitting on them, when we ought to be telling them that He loves them.

As I prayed, the Holy Spirit said to me, “Your intimacy with me is only as intense as your willingness to be intimate with your worst enemy”. He then referred me to 1 John 4:20 “If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”

You know that scripture is a “2 way street” because you can apply it to the way people treat you, and you can apply it to the way you treat others.

I was starting to feel myself pull back more and more, and my willingness was waining. I realize that I cannot force people to accept everything that is me, but I can make myself continue to be willing to reach out to them. This is purely a matter of survival, because I need my relationship with the Father in Heaven to be at its greatest level.

There are going to be those that reject or pull (or push) away from you or your kids, but you must still be willing (this is the key word) to still live the love of God towards them.

If there is one thing for certain, I may not need acceptance from people, but I absolutely need (and desire) it from God. God offers this acceptance even when I am unlovable, and the only way I can begin to pay Him back is to love my worst enemy (that includes those I do love, but they are just being selfish and mean).

There is such freedom in this. There is freedom in being able to love and be loved, but this freedom comes with a price. The price was paid when Jesus died for the lowest human (ourselves), and the price is repaid when we love those who treat us as the lowest human.

Jesus never considered us His enemy, but He considered us those He loved who were “being selfish and mean”.

I identify myself by where I am, as opposed to where I have been, by saying I am a “Christian”. I could maybe even identify myself as a “Sinner Saved By Grace” because I have renounced sin by becoming a Christian even though I stumble an fall, but I have issue with that.

What I don’t understand is how a person will identify themselves by the sins and mistakes that they still deal with. You might say that you are an alcoholic, but if you are renouncing that sin then you are technically a “Recovering Alcoholic” or “Ex-Alcoholic”. Saying that you are (are = the current status) a recovering alcoholic, then you have come to the conclusion that you have renounced the old lifestyle for a newer one, and you are making the journey away from that.

If a person is in prison and gets saved, they are a prisoner of their warden, but made free in Jesus. When they get out of prison, they become an ex-con, and that means they no longer live in the prison system.

Why is it then that some have chosen to accept Jesus, but refuse to renounce the sin that He has saved us from? Yes, we are saved by grace, and that is never in question.

If Jesus came to save us from our sin, and to become a Christian means you realize that there needs to be a change but you cannot do it on your own, why call yourself a Christian and continue to hold onto the very sin that you needed saving from? I don’t get it.

My very desire is to renounce the sin, but reality is that temptation is all around me. Yes I couldn’t save myself when I was drowning in sin, and even now sin trips me up over and over, but I still want to put a distance between sin and myself.

I find myself frustrated when I fall, but I am so grateful that Jesus pulled me out of that and I can go on as if nothing happened between me and Him. For this I am grateful for the Blood of Jesus.

But back to my original question. Why would I want to identify myself by the thing that I was delivered from? It is very dangerous to do this, but it seems to be a more prevalent thing in todays church.

You see whole churches built around people identifying themselves by the sin they are living in, when Jesus died to deliver us from that. It is disrespectful to ask Jesus to save you, forgive you and tell Him that He is Lord only to turn around and say “I am a Sinner For Jesus”.

1 Corinthians 5:9-13 says,

“9 I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.
12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.” ”

You can not write off the person who does not know that Jesus died for them, but we are warned about associating with the person who calls themselves a Christian and refused to renounce sin. We are to lovingly restore them, but if they do not want to be delivered from sin, you need to separate yourselves from them.

I am not saying that you have the right to question their salvation (that is God’s call).

Sometimes this is a tough call, but it is necessary for personal spiritual survival. The scripture tells us to have fellowship with other believers for our own benefit. We are to build up each other, and help each other stay on the straight and narrow.

When you surround yourself with others who identify themselves by the sins of the world, you open yourself to falling into more sin than when you first got saved.

Ask yourself today what is is that you identify yourself by. If it is something other than where you want to be, make a conscience change to re-identify yourself. As you renounce sin, and announce Jesus, you will find yourself starting to be where you need to be in life.

Faith in God = Making the Words of God the main determining factor for every action you take, and remaining at peace whether you know the outcome or not.

Fear = Anytime you realize, that what you believe, is not enough to support the actions you find yourself in, and you are totally unequipped to control their outcome.

Hope = The expected outcome for any action.

Hope in God = Knowing that by following His instruction, you will come to the completion of the expected result.

False Hope = Taking action even when the result is unknown.

Vision = Seeing the end result.

Vision of God = Taking on the purposes of God knowing that there will be personal sacrifice, but that there is an expected outcome that is greater than yourself.

Unfocused Vision = Only seeing to the point of being able to control immediate circumstances, thinking that they are end results when in fact they are supposed to be minor adjustments to obtaining the expected result.

Control = A baseline standard for obtaining an end result.

Humility = Knowing that every good result comes from obedience to God’s Words and Instruction, and following them until the end result is obtained.

Pride = Refusing to follow the instruction of the designer to the point that the stability and reliability of the end result is unattainable, all the while knowing that you were hoping to use the design to obtain that result.

Love = Desire to the point of taking on personal sacrifice.

God’s Love = Jesus, sacrificing Himself for the chance to gain back a fearful, hopeless, unfocused, and prideful human race so that they could live in His Peace which is the end result.

Mankind’s Love = Rejecting the one who gave them everything they needed, because it means they will have to trust in, hope for, and follow someone else to gain a peace they desire, but are unable to obtain on their own.

Quiz:
What is your desired end result after this life is over? (pick one)
1) Eternal peace with God through the salvation that Jesus provides, knowing that we were unable to obtain this on our own.
2) Eternal regret and suffering by continuing to try to do things your own way, knowing full well that it was your own way that got you in this mess to begin with; while making the end result unattainable.

Grading Scale:
If you answered #1, you get an “A” which stands for Acceptance (for eternity)
If you answered #2, you get an “F” which stands for Fire (also for eternity)

When Mary first played the video for me, I could start to sense why this song would give so many people a “warm fuzzy feeling”, while turning off others.

To every Christian, the term God is the same as Jesus. We understand that Jesus is God and God is Jesus, but the world doesn’t see that. When we as Christians push to be a Nation under God, the world agrees to the fact, that they are all serving their own gods. Note the use of big G God and small g god?

When people first started settling this continent, it was by and large to escape “religious persecution”. People wanted to be able to worship God as they saw fit. The statement “…Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” has one meaning to the Christian Believer, and a totally different meaning to the person who puts their faith in their own pursuits.

As a Christian, my allegiance is more directed towards the Kingdom of God, and my job is more as Christ’s Ambassador to the Nation of America. As a Christian American I have privileges as one who has dual citizenship. I have God given rights as a Christian as well as God given rights as an American.

The problem is when laws are based on the principals of God without the use of the Name of Jesus. You cannot say “one nation under God” and leave Jesus out, because what you have is “one nation under god” where everyone is just plain religious. All religion ever gave this country was a bad taste in its mouth, because that religion was void of Jesus.

Jesus is the love of God proven, but religion is void of love because Jesus is not in it. Jesus instructs us to love others more than ourselves, and religion teaches us to serve ourselves despite the needs of others. Religion causes people to hijack planes and bomb buildings. Religion causes people to burn people at the stake, and kill off our unborn babies.

This is sad because even God tells us what pure religion is through His Word. James 1:26-27 (The Message) Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

So then, if we reach out to the homeless and loveless with stuff, and it is devoid of Jesus, we only help them till the point of death. But, if we add the name of Jesus to what He says is Real Religion, then there is nothing there to leave a bad taste in the mouth of this nation, and people are helped well into eternity.

Point blank without debate is that Jesus is God loving us so much that He came down from Heaven to reach out to “the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” Jesus died for everyone, to save anyone who calls out to Him and trusts Him.

Is is just fine and wonderful to be a Nation under God, but it is impossible to get there without going through Jesus. We cannot create Christian Laws, without first leading each individual to Christ. To demand that people be a nation under God, without letting them meet God through Jesus first, is irresponsible and selfish.

If we cannot find our way as individuals to God except through Jesus, then we as a nation cannot get to God without going through Jesus also. God cannot help America until it first does things “in Jesus name”.

The world in an attempt to adapt itself to a “disabled/handicapped” person has frustrated itself and the people it tries to adapt to.

I think the main reason is that life can be frustrating. It is easy to “try” to change others to our way rather than adapt ourselves to the ways of others. The problem is that we can’t change (educate) others because they have their own issues to deal with.

Misty will be 17 tomorrow, and I am at another stage in her life. She will be taking her GED this summer so that she can start to focus on taking care of herself.

I can’t go on a campaign to make the world ready for her, but I have to focus on making her ready for the world. I tell her that there are people who have no clue about Spina Bifida (note I am making no attempt to explain it, or the opportunities it brings) and that she needs to get herself ready.

They won’t respond or understand the way that they should because they are just as handicapped. What has made them handicapped is their ignorance of what Spina Bifida is.

I guess it means that we all are in the same frustrating boat called “life”, and it is up to us to understand others rather than expect them to understand ourselves. We are all “handicapped” by something.

If we look at the example of the Lord Jesus, we see that we are to love others enough to help them as much as they will allow and meet them where they are. Jesus never tried to make us perfect first before accepting us, but we were made perfect in Him because He loves us.

I think it is cool that even though we all have our issues Jesus sees us as perfect, just like I see Misty as perfect.

I think it is awesome that Jesus reaches down to help us, just like I help Misty

I think it is sad when we refuse Jesus help, just like the times Misty refused mine.

And it breaks my heart when we suffer because of our unwillingness to change ourselves, and expect others to change for us.