I haven't been to the sunday gathering in a few weeks. The first time was because I had hurt someone and didn't want to face them maybe because having me in their life would just twist the knife some but more accurately because I felt guilty / ashamed.
Yeah I did goto mount olivet, and instead of going to the sunday gathering I went to a men's community group-like thing that I'd been involved in at mount olivet. In my mind I felt justified but not really in the heart. Anyway, I think it has been about 3 weeks and I've always had an excuse. Last week it was because my sleep schedule was messed up (I didn't bounce back to days too well so I was exausted). This week I did the mount olivet thing and also didn't bounce back to days (until today I woke up at 2am on my days off).
Excuses are like butts, everyone has one and they stink. The reality is that we make time for what is important to us. One thing that Dave said at community group was that there was a teen who he was ministering to that worked a job, saved up enough money and was all stoked about buying an Ipod. Dave challenged him to instead give the money he was going to spend on that to charity / missions or something like that. Something that would make a difference in the world. November is comming to a close and my buget is getting somewhat tight. I spent a good chunk of money on building a computer. The project was a bit more expensive than I planned.
James 4 talks about people that make these plans... plans to go and trade and make a profit and how they are fools. Dave really echoed the heart of this passage when he started talking about how we focus on what we need to stop doing. However, 'to him to knows how to do good but does it not, to him it is sin' I wonder if the things I do are making a difference, if I'm missing out. If I'm being a good steward of my time. Ginny was asking me last night how I was doing on my quiet time, which I'm not doing a good job, I felt really convicted today and ploped on Dave's mp3 on james4 and read the passage he preached on.
One of the things that punk Dave has said a few times is this:
If we were reading our Bibles, things would be different.
Yeah, way to meddle there, I hardly ever read like I used to. Wordly speaking I'm doing ok, I'm caught up in the rat race... I'm doing well but it is meaningless. God doesn't care if I have a good job, if I drive a nice car, own my home live ritsy. I checked Terry's blog a while ago and he posted this thing about income and what percentage we are, I don't know how accurate it is but it said that I'm in the top 1% of humanity. That made me feel like I really sucked how I need to get it together.
Monday night Tori and Nova came over (they'd never seen my place before) and earlier that day Mike wanted to play Mario Bros but we couldn't get super mario all stars to work for SNES but we hooked up that grimy old thing and got mario world working. Anywho, everyone joined in the fun and there were cries of distress cheering for sucess, it was a lot of fun.
