Haircut

I went and got a haircut on Monday. I like a cheap cut, so I went to Wal-Mart and went to Cost Cutters to get my haircut. I gave them my name and phone number, and the pretty lady said it will be about 15 minutes. Hearing this I took a seat waiting by the door. I sat there twittering on my phone, and just thinking about things. While thinking to myself I though "hmm wonder if the cute girl will cut my hair".

Then she said "Adam, I'm ready for you right over here." I walked over, being the guy I am the first thing I noticed about her was her massive ring on her left-ring finger. Then I sat down in the chair while she cut my hair. It started with the awkward hair-cut chit-chat, but then I think we both got more comfortable as the conversation got more in depth. I found out that she is getting married on Saturday to a guy that went to Iowa State for a year, but then he transfered. She is pregnant and due in January. She loves jewelry. She thinks Heath Ledger is pretty, and her fiance looks like him.

hmm... what else.? Oh yes, she gave me some advise as well with girls. She said to be grateful for the things women do for men, they really appreciate it. She said this after saying her fiance better be grateful after she has the child in January. I think this is great advise as some men do not always appreciate the things their women do for them.

This is a random post, but for some reason this lady has been on my mind for the week. I pray her and her husband have a wonderful life together, and that their baby is healthy and has a wonderful life as well. I hope that they come to know Christ if they do not. I wish I would have talked to her about Jesus, but I didn't. Maybe this is why she has been on my mind, for it's highly possible that she will could end up in Hell, and I had the opportunity to share with her, but didn't, because I was comfortable where I was.
I pray to God that he guide me and help me take advantage of these opportunities more often, and that He uses me to be a tool for his mighty kingdom!

Here it comes!

Well things are starting to hit me. I'm not going back to school this year. WEIRD! My friends are preparing for school, and I sit and watch. It's starting to hit me that I won't be living in Iowa in just over a month. I will be living 12 hours from here. Kinda scary, but I know who is driving this ship. It's not me, but Him. I have fully believe that this is what God wants me to do, and I am trusting him to take care of me on this journey! I am ready to learn and grow. I want to take the Lord in an Extreme Way to this Extreme World!

Something Big!

Something big is about to happen at Life Church. I don't know exactly what, but I'm excited for it. I can't wait! My brother is excited, I am excited, and I know many other people are excited! Life is about to take a new step as a church and I love it. I really feel this is a God thing. I hope you are there for it! I don't know exactly what things will look like or be like, but I am preparing myself and praying to God that it is radical and extreme. I hope it stretches our minds on Christianity and brings people closer to become true Followers of Christ!

Random Adam

So today was a good day. I worked and ran and went to Bible study. It was quite fun as we talked about love. We talked about what love really is and how God describes love and not what the world describes it as. Within this we talked a little about relationships and dating and all that jazz. Which one of the most important things that is needed in the whole dating relationship is communication. Is it a date? Is it not a date? is it a predate? Who knows, but it should be communicated even if that means getting the answer you don't want to hear.

I love people. I know generic christian comment. but really I do. I love people so much that I just want to be there and help them. I want to bring everyone to know my best friend and help them know the things He can do for them. to free them and teach them real love, but talk is cheap and I don't really get out there and do it. I don't really take time to go out of my way to share Him with anyone. I do help teach at Awaken, but other than that I don't. This may not be a big deal to some people, but my life dream is to share Him and affect as many lives as I can with his Love and Power. This is my life dream. Do you have a dream your not currently following? Why not? What's holding you back? I know I am leaving for Dallas in a little over a month, and this is a step towards my dream, but why am I not taking advantage and helping more here. I hope to change this over the next two weeks. And trust me I'll let you know on here.

We never arrive in this life. We never get to a point and say I'm happy to be done to be where I'm at. We never say God I'm done take me, my life is complete and I don't want anything else. If you can say this. I call you a liar. This life is a never ending journey and story. It is a mission, an exploration. We will never reach the perfect destination, but as we walk toward Christ and our dreams the story will grow, and lives will be changed.

So this post is random and basically just what came to my mind as the fingers were typing. I don't really care about the punctuation or spelling in it, just random and my mind for the night.

thoughts of a 19 year old single christian male

Life is not easy for anyone, those who say it is easy for are not telling the truth. A disclaimer on this post is that I'm not trying to complain or say life is harder for me. I'm just throwing it out there. Which I don't know why I am putting this disclaimer on here, 'cuz I really don't like disclaimers, but here it goes.

God has placed a LOT of beautiful and wonderful women on this Earth! This can also make things difficult in this day in age.

As a teenage guy (and just as a guy in general), I see girls and it is hard to fight back the lustful thoughts, but I do my best and pray for strength through it. Why do I try not to think these things, well multiple reasons. First because the Lord my God told me not to and I love him so much that I don't want to. Second, I think women deserve more respect than given, and should not just be looked at and lusted over as a piece of property. Third, I love my future wife (no idea who she is yet) so much that I don't want to even think about other women in such a matter. This list goes on, but I'll stop there.

It saddens me that so many teenagers have sex. I once did a paper about teenage sex, and did some researching. I found that 4 out of every 5 teens have sex. This is sad. This makes it no surprise how sexual tv and advertising has gotten. I know that I don't know how good it feels, or whatever, but I know that more happens during sex than just something that feels physically good. I know that a part of you becomes a part of the other person, no matter how young or many times they've done it. This is why I don't want to give a part of me in this way to anyone, but my future wife.

I have found a lot of awesome and very beautiful Christian girls. It never fails that after I meet them, one of the first things I do, is pray and say "God is she the one?" This happens to me all the time. I'm not asking anymore. I'm asking God help me find the one. I know I'm 19, and definitely not ready to get married, but when I find a girl that I even want to date, one of the first things I will ask myself is if I can marry her. This may sound funny to well, everyone, but it's not a joke. I don't want to mess around with the lets just have a good time while we're young attitude, as I only get one life here, and I want to spend it with the right woman.

Another note to this post is that I'm not over stressed thinking about this, or even really looking, it's just some more random thoughts that have gone through my head this last week, and felt like sharing.

Fun

This last week has been a lot of fun. I've gotten to hang with friends a lot, and Life Church is having a BBQ in which I am heading to in about an hour.

I said hang out with friends a lot this last week. Tuesday I went to Bible Study at Amie Kiehn's place, then we went to a park and hung out for a while. Thursday after a disappointing youth group I went to Marissa's place and then a few of us went and saw the midnight showing of A Dark Knight! That movie is amazing and I highly recommend seeing it! Last night I went to Allison Steven's place to hang out with a group of friends and that was a lot of fun as well. The reason I wrote the first sentence of this paragraph is, well at the beginning of summer I didn't know any of the people I spent this last week with and mentioned. I love how God puts people in our lives to make things better. I thank Amie Kiehn for emailing my brother and asking if I was interested in Bible Study, because if it wasn't for that I really wouldn't have any friends around here that are my age, and it has really made summer a lot more fun!

Dreaming

Here is a dreaming cloud. Actually I took this photo on the 4th down at Rathbun, but often time clouds are correlated with dreams, and since I'll be dreaming a little in this post I figured it'd fit to put this cloud!

I have big dreams. I refuse to settle for anything lower than them. Why do I dream? I don't know what else to do. I love our kids at Awaken. I loved the kids at Shift 2:24 (Heartland youth group I helped with this last semester). I love teenagers. I don't want to do anything else with my life than to help them be the best they can be. I want them to know Jesus, and have a major impact on our world. I may not have had a huge impact on this world, but I'm only 19, and I will before I die. I'm not stepping out and being cocky or overconfident. I am stepping by faith in God and believing him that I have been called for something much bigger than myself.

I have been through and seen a lot in my 19 years of life. If you know me I'm not the normal kid. I'm a dreamer, not just the dream upon cloud dreams, but visions of Christ. I have been commanded to "GO" and not just from the Matthew, but by Christ direct in vision. I know he wouldn't give me this without having a major plan. Does this make me better or more special than anyone else? Absolutely not! I just have been lucky enough to have been given direct guidance. I love Jesus and He loves me. I want to share this love with the world and specifically the teenagers who will be our next generations leaders. I want to teach the kids of this world to be Extreme for Jesus. I don't want to be a normal youth leader, and I refuse to be normal, 'cuz I haven't been yet in my life, and don't plan starting anytime soon!

Most of you that read my blog already know most of these things, but I just have been feeling it on my heart a lot more than usual lately, and just needed to write it out there!

Idiot!

I'm sitting here on the couch right now on a Friday evening thinking to myself "What am I going to do tonight?" and the answer is NOTHING. Why? I really don't know. I keep doing this thing where I decide not to make plans and even when someone asks I'm say "nah, I think I'm gonna' stay in tonight", I even say I might have plans, but don't really and really, I don't want to stay in and do nothing. I should be out with friends having real relationships with them, but no I'm sitting here blogging! I could even be productive and read, but I'll probably get back on facebook and do that again. I know this post is random and back and forth, but that's life! Actually, this is enough, I'm leaving, I'm going to find something to do, even if it is just read, but I'm getting off of this computer, and if your reading this and bored on a Friday or Saturday give me a call, 'cuz chances are I'm not doing anything.

Party

Saturday night I went to a party in New Sharon. There was a lot of drinking going on. Primarily underage drinking. I did not drink, as I have gone down that path, and know it hurts my relationship with Christ. I still went to hang out with friends, and did a little babysitting as well. At the party I encountered many strange, tough, and some down right funny situations.

I drove a car of friends to the party. On the way there I said "I hope I know more people than just you guys at the party". As soon as I got out of the car on the gravel road I saw a car of people driving past me, and they yelled "ADAM!" From this point on I knew I would have some friends at the party.

Later at the party I was just standing around talking when a girl walked up and bit me on the neck. I was completely thrown off by this and backed away and asked what the heck she was doing, but by this point she was to the next guy biting his neck. I'm glad she didn't get me very good as that would be quite embarrassing for me.

Later I was talking to the girl that bit me and she knows I'm a Follower of Christ. I don't think she understands what that really entails, which saddens me that people don't understand the concept of being a follower of Jesus. She is a Catholic girl, and kept making it a point to tell me she goes to church every Sunday, except when she parties she goes on Saturday nights, so she doesn't have to wake-up early on Sunday morning. I finally asked her why she enjoys going to church, and she told me it makes her feel good having gone and sitting there and doing the "Jesus thing". This absolutely pisses me off. Not what she said, but that she can be consistent to church and still not hear to Love and Truth of Jesus. She said to me "I heard drinking is a sin" as she took a pull of UV Blue. I explained to her that drinking while of age is not a sin, but underage drinking and getting drunk is a sin. She then with a sad look on her face said "Do you think God will forgive me if I go to confession and church next week?" It is my prayer that people like this will learn to repent and that there is more to life than parties, and getting drunk. I also make it my prayer that the church does not condemn them for drinking, but loves them for who they are, as transformation cannot happen until Christ is in there life.

As I was the one to drive the car, I kept the keys which meant I had to continually go back and forth to the car for them to get their alcohol out of the car. One time when we went to the car one of my friends said "Adam help me I made out with that kid and he won't leave me alone now". This made an awkward situation I do not condone what she did, but I felt the need to help her. I then just kept my arm around her for a while to make the guy think we were "together" and he just kept calling her cell phone, but wouldn't come talk to her, so I did my part.

Later the same girl that bit me text my friend I had my arm around and it said "did you kiss him, I wanted to". This was really weird to me, as I don't hardly know the other girl and yeah just strange. This also says to me that she kept talking about church as she was just hitting on me thinking I would like her or kiss her, because I think she attends church.

On the way home we had to stop 3 or 4 times for a friend of mine to throw up on the side of the road. I cannot believe that I let myself do that before. I thank God I have moved past that point in my life, and pray for the people living in it right now.

I had fun with my friends, and learned a lot in one night, even though I've been to many parties, drinking and not drinking. This shows that we need to get out and meet the people where they are at as they are searching for something and they need Jesus. After all Jesus didn't hang out with just the righteous, but with the ones that really needed him.

Independence Day

July 4, 1776 the greatest country ever came into existence. A country of freedom and people who stood together. I love this country. I thank God for putting this country on the map and blessing it the ways it has. This country no longer stands for what it originally stood for. This makes me sad. I wish our country could be back to the way it was two hundred thirty-two years ago, but unfortunately all great empires of the past have come to an end. When will we see our end? I hope not anytime soon!

On this Independence Day I got to go boating on Lake Rathbun. It was a blast! I love the lake, and riding the wakeboard. I also got to spend time with my sister, her husband, and their boys. I love those guys so much. In the photo below I'm on my wakeboard, and yes I look like a dork, but I am giving thumbs up to my nephew Taiter (Chunk as I like to call him).



Happy Birthday America!