the first step

	بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
	الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ
	الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
	مَالِكِ يَوْمِ الدِّينِ
	إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ
	اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ
	صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا الضَّالِّينَ

In the name of God,
the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe,
The Compassionate, the Merciful,
Sovereign of the Day of Judgment.

You alone we worship,
and to You alone we turn for help.

Guide us to the straight path,
The path of those whom You have favored,
Not of those who have incurred Your wrath,
Nor of those who have gone astray.

the blogger's prayer

wow
this is wonderfully hilarious :)

The Blogger's Prayer

Our Father
who lives above and beyond the blogosphere

Give us this day a life worth blogging,
The access to words and images that express our journey with passion and integrity,
And a secure connection to publish your daily mercies.

Your Kingdom come into new spaces today,
As we make known your mysteries,
Posting by posting,
Blog by blog.

Give this day,
The same ability to those less privileged,
Whose lives speak louder than ours,
Whose sacrifice is greater,
Whose stories will last longer.

Forgive us our sins,
For blog-rolling strangers and pretending they are friends,
For counting unique visitors but not noticing unique people,
For delighting in the thousands of hits but ignoring the one who returns,
For luring viewers but sending them away empty handed,
For updating daily but repenting weekly.

As we forgive those who trespass on our sites to appropriate our thoughts without reference,
Our images without approval,
Our ideas without linking back to us.

Lead us not into the temptation to sell out our readership,
To see people as links and not as lives,
To make our blogs look better than our actual story.

But deliver us from the evil of pimping ourselves instead of pointing to you,
From turning our guests into consumers of someone else’s products,
From infatuation over the toys of technology,
From fame before our time is right.

For Yours is the power to guide the destinies behind the web logs,
To bring hurting people into the sanctuaries of our sites,
To give us the stickiness to follow you, no matter who is watching or reading.

Yours is the glory that makes people second look our sites and our lives,
Yours is the authority above all authorities
Yours is the ranking above all rankings

For ever and ever,

Amen

thanks to this dude:
http://marcsmessages.typepad.com/

random things

i haven't gotten enough sleep lately.
i never feel like going to bed before midnight. i have to force myself to. even when i wake up as gosh darn early as i have to. :)
and being sleepy when you need to be working is wretched.

i was at the hove's on saturday night. played monopoly and ocarina of time.
watched the end of x-men 2 on sunday night.
and watched gladiator last night.

gladiator is a good one.

for one, it's a good ending to silence of adam.
though i guess i'm a bit funny right now, because it didn't have the emotional effect i would normally expect.

it's a movie with lots of action
but also wonderful depth and meaning.

and no sex!
not one scene
how incredible is that?!


on the topic of sex...
i've been listening to old xxxchurch podcasts the last two days while working.
they're rather entertaining.
often very interesting as well.
hmm... and a number of other good things.

i heard about this guy named...
jason harwell.
he has a song called "flowers" that's absolutely beautiful...
(xxxchurch plays the whole thing at 10:30 into podcast #63 [hahaha... of all the podcasts... if you listen to the whole thing and it's your first picture of xxxchurch prepare to be... a little weirded out? {in fact prepare to feel uncomfortable even if you do know what Craig and JR are about- for a minute or two at least}])

woohoo!
i got promoted
sort of...
i think.
my boss came and said he wanted to kick things up a bit.
most of what i do is make corrections and revisions on drawings. they give me a drawing with things that need to be changed marked in red, and i change it the way they want on the computer.
i'm not sure exactly what he's thinking... but it sounds like i'll get to do stuff that involves more thinking.
which is a good thing. :)

a good thing to do is write prayers down in journals, but instead of just using all the space for yourself... just write... a little bit. one thought, instead of a whole page long string of them. and then pause. and listen. and use a different color to write down what you think God has to say back. and have a conversation.

this has been one of those weird posts that i've been slowly adding to all day long.
the timestamp says 9 o'clock, but it's 3:30 now.
and i suppose there's not anything particularly meaningful.
but maybe you enjoyed it. :)

anyways
i need to finish drawing a concrete foundation before i leave

auf wiedersehen

hero

i feel like i've posted the picture at the bottom before
on xanga at least
but oh well

a few things that have been on my heart lately:
vision- read Joel 2:28
prayer- read Isaiah 61 and 62 for starters
action

prayer > vision > prayer > action

might even put more prayer after action
prayer is pretty important
it's everything

we were looking at John 1...
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!"

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want?"
They said, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?"
"Come," he replied, "and you will see."
So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We have found the Messiah" (that is, the Christ).

i thought it was need that the FIRST thing Andrew did was actually to just go BE with Jesus.
that's the prayer part for us.

anyways

the hardest thing is finding the vision in the first place
the passion
the drive that praying like a madman springs from
the vision that is really quite naturally followed by action

and that is what i'm searching for.
enough passion to pay the costs that are in the way.

passion for prayer. because i realize how important and needed it is...

and passion to act.
because i want to be these people, in a way.
and i rarely feel like i am.

prayer

how to pray?

this is as much or more for me as anyone else

praying should be more than talking
sitting still
saying words

that's almost not real

don't get me wrong, it certainly can be

but i think it can be bigger than that
better than that

Sometimes i get off track
worried about...
trying to use the right words
or focused on listening for God
or a billion different things

But it's not supposed to be like that

because really praying
is free
i think

just sitting saying words in your head isn't always free
and at the same time
putting effort into making it different isn't free either
because it's like you're trying to make it into something you want it to be like

i tend to face two big walls when i pray
i think everybody has something or other that they have to get around

for me, first is not feeling...
close enough to God

it's proposterous I know
considering prayer is how you truly get closer to him
bible study's, church, or memorizing verses about God, doesn't bring you closer
the only thing that does that is praying to him
talking to him
being with him

thats why prayer is so important

sometimes I feel like i'm too imperfect to be with God though
i have a voice in my head that tells me i can't be as close to him as I want to
not yet at least

I used to be so much better at praying
closer to God even, i think

i lost it somewhere along the way
and now that i want it back satan keeps telling me that i can't have it
he tells me to put praying off for later
tomorrow
because maybe then i'll be more... worthy to talk to God i guess
like maybe i'll be good until then,
so then God will allow me in his presence

but that's so wrong because God says that he makes us holy
nobody is righteous but God
but
now
he makes us righteous if we come to him

The point is
it's important to know that nothing holds you back from praying

Perhaps...
You don't feel close to God.
you can still talk to him
it's just going to take effort!
do you really want to or not?

we're so lazy
we don't like doing anything that takes effort

It's not always easy to pray
but it's always possible

The other thing, for me, is not listening.
Praying doesn't have to involve listening every single time.
But I think it should some of the time

if God is real, and you're talking to him, and he loves you
i should think he wants to talk back

but i'm bad at being impatient with him
or getting distracted
or being so focused on hearing what I want
that i don't hear anything when it comes

You've got to be patient
quiet

and persistent

read Daniel 10

have patience with God
he hears your prayers
sometimes it just takes a while to get a response.
for who knows what reason

be persistent
i think God tests us that way sometimes
if we really care we keep at it
if we give up... then did it really matter to us?

And you have to have your ears wide open
apparently God can answer you audibly
i've never heard him
sometimes he just gives you a strong feeling
sometimes he puts thoughts or pictures in your head
sometimes, after you pray, he sends a person to answer you

you have to keep your ears open because you don't know how he'll answer

I love when God responds.
Because it shows how much he loves us.

I can read that he loves me in the Bible.

But when he
talks to
me
i can see the stuff that i read or heard
coming true

what an honor it is to talk to God
to pray to God

it reminds you why you are still alive
and it reminds you why you are still living