Let's Go Down To The River

Day 359 in my "Year In My Life Through Pictures" blog series

I journeyed down to the riverfront this evening taking part in the "Live On Broadway" festivities. This is the local free, live entertainment outlet that me and some friends use to frequent to evangelize, pass out tracts and talk to others about Christ. We haven't done this in a while, so this was actually the first time I have attended in a while, maybe once or twice in the time span between is not going as a group. I had to avert my eyes several times, to say the least. To be a "good clean fun" place to go, advertised as "family fun" it was not very clean and not very family friendly. I did pass out a few tracts and listened to a gospel group too that were very good.

My pictures is on the river side of the flood wall and if you read any of my postings during the flood you know how high the water got. This picture shows you the levels embedded into the concrete wall. It is really neat to see the different spacing between levels, which I assume is reflective of the quickness of the water rising or falling. Anyway it got really high and would have been up to my chest whee I was standing taking this picture.

I actually had a single purpose in going down this evening as a brother and sister from church's son was playing at one of the locations along Broadway. I wanted to show support of this young brother and let him know that he had some fans from church. He is a very good guitarist and I was impressed. It made me want to take up trying to play the guitar again, something I tried when I was in my teenage years. I quickly became frustrated as it is a lot harder than it looks, having to put your fingers in certain places all the time and stuff to make it sound right . So, I am always very impressed with giftings of playing musical instruments, especially the guitar.

This young man happens to have also just surrendered his life to music ministry, wherever that takes Him. I really need to pray for this young man often as God works in his life, that He will place people in his path to guide him in honoring God through his music.

I also have to make a confession. Somehow I got off on my blog day numbers, so I have started changing all of the past "Day In My Life" days. I thought I was being careful, but apparently I wasn't and I noticed tonight when I started typing. Since it is within of my birthday no I knew that if I wrote until my birthday this year it would actually be 366 days. I messed up and I wanted to publicly confess I made a mistake.

Just Say No

Day 285 in my "Year In My Life Through Pictures" blog series

I have a sweet tooth. Just wanted to get that out there. So, what does a sweet tooth not agree with? My diet. This makes it very difficult when one of my favorite sweets is in the house, Little Debbie Nutty Bars. This is a test to my flesh, if I give in for a momentary satisfaction or to "just say no". I have determined that just saying no is the way to go. This also is affected by my "big why" in that my "why" for losing weight is much larger than my "why" for wanting to eat a Nutty Bar. Well, a whole box of Nutty Bars.

This is also a struggle in the spiritual realm often for me. Should I really commit that sin of the flesh instead of remaining true to my Lord? Do I really want to defile my Savior for a few moments of fleshly pleasures? Of course the answer is a firm no, so why do we choose to sin anyway? Is it that our flesh is so depraved, even if we are children of God? Is our flesh that in control that we can't say no? Not at all, we say no all the time to sin. In fact if not by the grace of God in any of our lives, saved or not, we would be so heinous that no one would want to be around anyone else. We couldn't have friends, because we would always be trying to steal from them, lie to them and probably kill them. The grace of God that keeps us from doing that is an amazing thing to ponder on for a while.

Just how bad would we be? Would we be bank robber bad? How about murderer bad? How about Hitler bad? I'd say even worse than any of those, because even Hitler had a type of universal grace from God that still withheld his full potential of evil, even though he is often considered the most evil man to have ever lived. Even Satan is restrained to a degree by God's grace. After all in Job we are told that Satan must obtain permission still from God to do anything.

So next time you are set between deciding to sin and deciding to not sin, think of God's grace in your life. Think on Him and His love a perseverance and tolerance of our sins, but not in a way to justify sinning, but in order to show just how much He loves us. That thought would make any true child of God really have to fight to say "yes" to sinning.