Prayer

Is God really there? Is He really listening? I mean, why would He. I'm just one person out of the billions on earth. Most people have worse problems than I do, right? So why should God care.

These are thoughts that I have noticed pass through Christians minds quite frequently. They feel that praying is useless and that God doesn't care about them. But let me ask you this... If you had three kids, and one of them was lost and in pain, would you just leave that one there because you have the other two? Not if you were any kind of decent person. God cares for every person on earth, and that includes you.

Some of you may be asking "But what about my prayers? They never get answered. It doesn't ever seem like He's listening.." Well, there's a very simple answer to that. He is listening.

Something I have realized is that there isn't any way to tell when a prayer will be answered, or how it will be answered until it is. I have noticed over the last few months a few prayers I made two or three years ago being answered. But at the same time, I have seen prayers I made get answered in the same night. Sometimes we just have to wait and be patient. But don't give up! Just keep praying, keep talking with God. Build your relationship with him. As you do, you'll find that your prayers could start to be getting answered quicker. Or even prayers you made a long time ago being answered.

As I was sitting in my room in the dark, finishing up this post, a song started playing on my computer. It's called 'Here With Me' by Mikeschair. The lyrics are great and carry a pretty good message. God is always here with us, no matter what is happening or where we are in life. He will never leave.

Erasers

If you were to go and look back on what things you have done in your life up to this day, what would stand out, the good or bad? If the bad stands out, why so? Why do we find it so hard to forgive ourselves for things? There could be many different reasons for each person. But if you go look in the bible, Jesus forgave anyone who showed true repentance. And he still does to this day. He would forgive every sin imaginable for any person in the world who opens their heart and lets him in. So why can't we ever seem to forgive ourselves?

Well, I was watching a TV show not too long ago, and they talked about how an amazing gift for someone could be an eraser. Think about that for a moment.. It's not a literal eraser, but an eraser that removes the bad things we have done from our minds. A tool used to forgive ourselves for things. Why don't we all do that? Just take an eraser to something you regret having done. It is gone and in the past. Today is a new day, and what happened yesterday or three weeks ago, or five years ago doesn't matter. Those days are dead and gone, but today is here and living, and tomorrow is coming. Don't waste time and energy thinking about things regret. Learn from those mistakes instead and live your life better than you have in the past.

This is a lesson I need to learn as well, and I think many, many other people should too.

Dream Again

Do you remember when you were a little kid how you used to dream about what you wanted to be when you grew up? There was no limit to it. If you were in a classroom, all of the kids would shout out what they wanted to be without a second thought. When we are little, we're encouraged to dream as big as we possibly can and as far as our imaginations will take us. But then as we get older, we are taught just the opposite. People tell us to lower our expectations to avoid disappointment. They tell us to grow up and think practically. To stop worrying about a dream and start worrying about how we are going to make money, and what is affordable. But what's the point in life if we just go through day by day, doing the same routine over and over again? What is the point in living if we have nothing to push for... no goal to reach. No dream to put an effort towards. I myself have found that there isn't really one. But then we come to this world around us that wants to crush us down into a box of little expectation and rigid thought. The world tells us that there is no use in dreams, because they will only lead to pain. It tells us to never take chances, to avoid any chance of failing. But if you look around, the greatest things on the planet were made because someone had a dream and took a chance. The Wright brothers, for instance. Everyone told them that people couldn't fly. That their machine wouldn't work. But they had a dream to open the sky to mankind, and they took a chance... Look at the result. Because of them we can fly nearly anywhere in the world, and even into space. Without that first working flying machine, much of what we have today wouldn't have happened. So why is it people today want to crush people's dreams?  I don't have an answer for that, but I do know that dreams are important. I'd like to encourage anyone who reads this post to take just a few minutes and think about what they would really like to do with their life. What some of their long term wishes would be. They may not be as impossible as you think...