Greetings dear readers! The photo above shows a very simple yet profound question. “How good do you have to be to be considered a “good person””. Notice the author used quotation marks implying a bit of spite in what they are saying with this piece. The thing is, this question is so much bigger and so much easier than this author could have ever dreamed. What does make you good? Is it the way that you live? Is it the choices that you make? Is it the actions that you take? Is it what you don’t do? Does abstaining from certain bad things make you good? These are real questions with sometimes hard to define answers. I am sure the author was not meaning to write anything that hits us on a spiritual level, however that is exactly what they have done, whether it be intentional or not. This is a question the church and Christians as a whole have struggled with for years. It is a profound question about salvation itself. Now I realize that whoever painted this sign was most likely not trying to reach people on this level and I am positive they were not trying to get into a deep seeded theological discussion, yet never the less here we be, so let’s jump right in.

What we see in the photo is a person asking a question that many have struggled with over the years. I know, speaking for myself, I have often thought I was not doing enough for God or for my fellow man and that in not doing enough I had been living in sin or at least sinning in some way. Now I am not saying I was going out and killing the innocent in the streets, but I felt like I was wrong for not going out and doing all these things that I thought I should be doing. I wasn’t reading the bible every day, I wasn’t going out and committing grand acts or Martyrdom, I wasn’t doing everything I thought I should be. I Was living in fear of God, but not a reverent fear, but a fear of punishment and rebuke. These things, these acts I felt I should be doing would be what the writer Paul calls works. I was wrapped up in works, and so is the person who penned this quote onto yon plywood. This person is struggling with a deep religious belief and they might not even be religious! The problem here is that last word I used. Religion. Religion itself is not something I care to use in a positive way, because religion itself is polarizing. It becomes stagnant and does more harm than it does good. This is because religion is all based on works, on what you have to do to “Earn Gods love” to get into Gods good favor. How many times have you heard a pastor or a televangelist say something along the lines of this “Now you know, that God has given us his Grace and Mercy and he did that by sending his only son to die for our sins, so that we might be saved and have eternal life!” At this point I am nodding my head going “Aw yeah” but then so many times they continue on and say things like this “But we know! That we must keep ourselves free of sin, keep our hearts pure and our lives outstanding in his eyes, lest we fall away from that salvation.” And that’s when I go “Huh?” because you have the first part, Gods grace has saved us through Christ, but then the second part, now make sure you are living right for God or that forgiveness that you just heard about won’t go to you. What?! I respectfully disagree with you Mr. TV televangelist man. If Christ finished it all on the Cross, took on the sins of not just the world of his day but the sins of everyone throughout all of time and creation, does it not cheapen his death to say that we have to earn that Grace? Is God sitting up in the clouds angrily looking down at all these disappointing people he has created just waiting to throw lightning bolts at us? Then luckily Jesus is there to go “Hey Dad wait a sec. Josh asked for forgiveness just now. Said he was sorry for calling that other driver a naughty word. Call off the air strike big guy.” If that is the case we are being rescued from God. But here is the cool part, God in a profound act of Mercy, while we were still his enemies, sacrificed the ultimate sacrifice so that we may be forgiven. How crazy is that? We deserve nothing less than death, yet we were saved by an act of love. Christ said “It is finished” and I believe he meant it. It is finished; sin no longer has control over these people. Death is done and now life may abound. Just think about that for a moment. It is amazing! . < /p>

Boom, new paragraph. Okay, so in looking at the Finished work of Christ, does it not make sense that we should no longer worry about following the Law, but instead follow the new covenant that Christ sealed with his own blood? This new covenant, one of Grace, a promise to the world that all we have to do is believe in him and we will be saved. A promise of salvation from the Law, from religion, from having to earn our salvation. What would your life be like today had someone told you many moons ago that you were beautifully and wonderfully made and that all you have to do is believe in Christ and the rest in the peace of God’s Grace? Now at this point some people are out there saying, now wait a minute J.T., are you saying that people no longer sin? Are you saying that I can just go out and do whatever I want and there will be no consequences? No, of course not. If Sin no longer exists then that would mean that Christ only died for the Sins of the world prior to his Death and resurrection. This is not the case, he couldn’t have died for our sins if we were no longer capable of sin. However what this does mean is that we are no longer held down by sin. In the first covenant that God had with Abraham, the one in the bible not the one on the penny, Sin was very much in the world but Abraham was not restricted or even held down by it. The guy straight up lies and lets a king take his wife for a night. That’s straight up wrong, yet do we see Abraham repentant the next day? No we see The King turn over all of his lands to Abraham. What!? That makes no sense, right? If Abraham was the one who sinned should God not have punished him? Struck him down? Taken his land and Family away from him? Nope. God dealt with Abraham under the first covenant. All Abraham had to do was believe in God and the lord would provide. He just had to have faith. We by no means should go out and live horrendous unbiblical lives. That is not living for God. Instead we must go out and live in Grace. We must walk in the total Victory that is the finished work of Jesus Christ. In doing so you won’t want to live any other way but a righteous and Holy life because you will realize that we are walking representations of Christ. We are Holy because He is Holy and we are righteous because He is righteous. We have the Authority of the living God inside of us. The hope of the world! Living and breathing with us right inside of us! There is no Good deeds you have to do to earn it you are a good person because he is a good person. All you have to do is accept God! No magic prayer, no special words. Just simple accept Christ as your savior, accept Gods love for you. You need not try and learn to love God more, he does not need anything from you. You just need to learn to let him love you. To lean that you are BEAUTIFUL in his eyes and that you are a living, moving, walking, talking, little Christ! If he loves you that much, how could you ever even think that you had to do a single thing to earn his love. How could you think that you are capable of doing anything, that God would need? That you could give him anything that he does not already have? You can’t! He is God! There is not a single thing you can do for him, yet he still wants to love you. Just let yourself accept that love. Nothing you have done or ever will do is capable of making God love you any less or more. His message is a message of hope and love. There is no condemnation in this Love of God, only a radical Grace.

-J.T.-

Salutations my dear readers, I hope your day is going well. I feel like I have not had a chance to write a good blog this is due to the fact that I have been updating the Vlog so much lately. Speaking of that I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the fact that iMovie ’09 will not accept my Flip videos format and so I can not edit my videos with it. It has caused me considerable frustration. I will continue to use iMovie HD until I get the issue resolved.

I have had a fairly good last few days for the most part. Over the weekend I went out to the lake with my family and spent some quality time with Mary riding around on the boat and having very relaxing Naps. Although I did have a rather vivid nightmare involving a spider during one such nap. I also shot a video for the Vlog while there. That can be seen on this site as well as my YouTube page.

I have had a fun couple of weeks leading the band at Fusion. I really hope I get to do it more often, as it was a very fun and educational experience. I feel like I learned a lot about the way a band is led and what it takes to be an effective worship leader. I also learned that being nervous really does not help at all and there is really no need for it.

I hope to soon be updating this sites layout and theme. So be on the look out for that.

See ya!

Greetings dear readers, I hope you are having a wonderful day. I am in a very productive mood and I am not sure why. I have edited 3 videos for my own Vlog as well as the Fusion tumblr and the Fusion youtube page in the last 24 hours. It has made me feel very accomplished. I am working on several scripts for both Fusion Originals as well as this site. I hope they make you smile. Speaking of videos, I finally got around to filming and editing a new Vlog yesterday. I stayed up way too late editing it but I think the end result is worth it. Special thanks to Between the Devil for letting me use their music. They are a great band, look them up.

I am enjoying life with 2 jobs even though the added schedule has caused me to give up a few things like the Pulse. This makes me very sad but I have no time to run it anymore and I do not want to ask Mary to run it alone. Who knows, maybe we can start it up again next summer?

I am starting P90X with Mary tonight and I am very excited. This is day 1 so we have to measure our selves as well as take very un-flattering photos to show our progress from day 1-90. I have heard nothing but positive feedback about the program from everybody I know who has done it 100%. I know several people who said it’s too hard and that they did not like it. I am feeling up for a challenge. The harder workout means better results.

Well that is all for now dear readers, I hope you have enjoyed today’s post.

See ya!

-J.T.-