Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The Narrowing Road


"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."-Matthew 7:13-14
The way to Christ is a narrow road.  In my opinion, narrowing.  Getting smaller.
As of late I hear a great majority of Christians claiming that the rapture is happening soon.  I do not think this is altogether wrong, since it is said in part out of hope.  I myself look forward and have hope that the rapture will come soon.
That said, however we must remember that no one except God knows the timing of the rapture.
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."-Matthew 24:36
Not even Jesus in His man-ness (as a friend of mine put it) knows the time when He will come back.  I can just see Jesus standing in Heaven, pacing back and forth, waiting for God to say "Go get 'em!".
Earth is God's world, but satan does have some power.  There is a spiritual battle where the angels and demons do battle but there is also the physical where the Christians do battle with the subtle and also unsubtle sinful ways of the world.
We are the resistance.
We are the warriors in the service of the King.
We fight the pretender.
We are destined for victory.
But it is not ours.  The victory is the victory of God.
Being a Christian isn't 'easy' as it is often made out to be.  It is war, and war is a bloody affair.
As a Christian we face many, many struggles.  I would go as far as to say we face more struggles and hardships then non-believers.  But we have something they don't.  Something that is brings hope to the hopeless.  Rest to the weary. Healing to the hurt.
We have God by our side.  And if we allow Him too, He'll step in front of us.
God does not tempt us-but He does test us.  The beautiful thing about both though, is that He's with us.  Whether we're being tempted or tested, He always provides a way out and if we ask Him and pray He will always reveal it to us.
We are citizens of the Kingdom of God, but we're also its army.
The funny thing about the Kingdom of God's army though is that it's unlike the armies of the earth.  If we allow Him, Christ will come and inhabit our bodies and do battle for us.  And Christ is perfect.  It’s an army of perfect warriors.  An undefeatable army.
It’s right there.  It’s not magic like fantasy magic.  It’s not a spell.  It’s not going to make you fly or have fire spit out of your hands.  But it is powerful.  It’s the power of Jesus Christ.  It’s the power of God.
We Christians have it within our grasp, but we often ignore and dismiss it.

An ex-vampire came to our youth group last week.  To say the least it was an amazing testimony.  I won’t go into the details of what he went into but two things really stuck out.

One:  He told a story about a time two teenagers had been riding bikes and had wandered off into somewhere they shouldn’t have been-a landfill.  An occult ritual was happening and when they saw this they spun around on their bikes and pedaled away.  Without going into too much detail one of the teenagers who wasn’t a Christian was taken by a being.  The other was almost taken, but when he felt a claw-like hand on his chest he screamed out the name of Jesus.  The beast retreated and didn’t bother the teenager.  (The teenager that wasn’t taken was also a Christian).
There’s power in the name of our Savior.

Two:  He told us that through his sixteen years as a vampire, a witch and many other things involved in the occult he hardly ever saw any ‘action’ such as ‘magical’ things happening.  He also said that in the time that he has been a Christian he has learned much more about the spiritual and scene many more ‘magical’ things happen.  Magical being more along the lines of miracles such as healings.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’d say we serve an awesome God.  No need to get into the dark arts to see amazing things.  The devil is weak, our God is awesome in power.

“If you’re reading this, you are the resistance."
In Victory,

Monday, July 5, 2010

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

(If you're looking for the Venom and Song three book giveaway go here)
I recently found out about an award called the INSPYs and from that site I found another about Book Blogger Appreciation Week.
I would encourage you to go to BBAW's site and register-but be quick, registration ends on the 7th!
Book Blogger Appreciation Week basically is a great way to find more blogs that you enjoy reading as well as make your blog known to more readers.

I entered the Best New Blog category as The Narrowing Road has only been up a little over three months.  Since I entered this category I am required to submit five posts for BBAW to review.  Two posts must be reviews while the other three I have the freedom to choose.

 BOOK REVIEWS
Swords of the Six by Scott Appleton
A Century Turns by William Bennet

ARTICLES OF CHOICE
Fantasy, Part Six: Evil Creatures-Part six in my series on fantasy races
Sin=Punishment-A little thought-about factor in fiction
Know Your History!-A thought on history in fantasy

I also entered the YA Book Blog category and am required to submit three reviews and two of my choosing.  I have listed them below:
BOOK REVIEWS
Swords of the Six by Scott Appleton
A Century Turns by William Bennet
Venom and Song by Wayne Thomas Batson and Christopher Hopper

ARTICLES OF CHOICE
Dragons Anyone-First in my six-part fantasy race series
You can't do anything? Hold up-A call to action in politics

Thursday, July 1, 2010

How to Design Your Blog-Page One

How to Design Your Blog-No HTML Knowledge Required

This guide is, in short, to explain to those not tech-savvy, or simply don’t have the time to deal with all that HTML mumbo-jumbo how to fully utilize Blogger’s potential-specifically, Blogger in Draft’s blog design template.   I’m not going to deal with the HTML jargon; you can get that on any old website simply by searching Google.  I want to explain how to build an efficient blog template that can be unique from the hundreds of thousands of bland blogs out there.
There will be a few sections that explain some more advance tutorials that will have HTML coding in them-but very small and simple at that-and can be skipped if you would like to avoid it.