The RIGHT stuff…Politically InCorrect

The 100 day devotional Teen People Of The Bible will be officially released tomorrow. When I was asked to review it, I originally had some reservations. My initial thought was “Okay, here’s going to be another one of those typical relationship centered ‘if it makes you happy’ teen devotionals that’s no different than what I see on the bookshelves at the Christian book stores”. I’m happy to say that I was proved completely wrong.

In fact, I’ve been waiting a long time for a devotional like this to come along. Daniel Darling’s Teen People Of The Bible is by far the best Bible study I’ve ever seen thus far. It’s not a watered down “warm fuzzies” version of the Bible for teens, it takes you deeper into The Word and is both challenging and convicting. As I was going through it, I was incredibly blessed and challenged by the life applications.

Another great thing about this devotional is the way it’s set up. First, you’ll read the theme verse and the passage in the Bible. For example on Day 4, the overall theme is legacy. The teen we’re studying is Abel, the verse is Genesis 4:10 and the passage is Genesis 4. You’ll have to read the passage and the chapter in order to fully understand the “digging deeper” section. In that section and in the “Just Like You” section we’ll see ways to apply what we just learned. At the end of every lesson there is a spot for journaling, which makes you think deeper and also helps you understand the application. There’s also a prayer included in every day’s lesson that relates directly to what we discovered in scripture that day. Each lesson is only about 2 pages long, which means that it doesn’t take 3 hours to complete, and leaves you with something to think about and apply after you close the book.

Teen People Of The Bible is not a “feel good” devotional, but it is definitely one that when applied will change your life and bring you closer to Christ. This is one devotional that I highly recommend.

(Teen People Of The Bible will be put in the resource page, and can be bought on Amazon.com. It would make a great Christmas or Birthday present, I’ve already got a list of people I’m going to give it to.)

2006 has been a very busy year, with midterm elections taking up a majority of it. Elections however, weren’t the only thing in the news this year. We had everything from “domestic spying”, to foiled Terrorist plots in England, Border control and amnesty, Scandals, Hezbollah attacking Israel, and finally justice for the Iraqi people.

Through it all, we’ve learned some very important things. One being let the intelligence community and military do their job without media interference. Second, unless we want a Eurabia in the U.S. - FIX THE BORDER! Third, we need to stop trying to make Katie Courric our friend and start getting things done. Fourth, Christian Conservatives – you need to get out and vote in primaries and general elections I don’t care HOW mad you are, not voting is ineffective.

Inspite of the negative, there were many highlights of 2006. One of the more prominent and most recent is justice being served in Iraq. I remember the words “We Got Him” spoken on December 14^th 2003 at the start of my church service. Then on December 29, 2006 justice was served and the world is now less one evil terrorist dictator.

2006 was also a growing year spiritually. God has continued to reveal Himself and little pieces of His plan for my life to me over this last year. Amazing doors have opened; one major door is interning at my State capitol during legislative session with a Representative who is a good Christian and also pro- home school. Working with him is enabling me to do things that I would have been unable to had I been a college student or working for a different representative.

Another great thing that God has done this year is allow me to work on staff with Regenerate Our Culture and interact with like minded teenagers who aren’t the “norm”.

This year has also been an excellent learning year. With Operation Completion, and working on 5 campaigns since May, I’ve learned a lot about working with people and persevering. The phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” has rung true over and over again.

The year 2006 and six has definitely been my craziest year, and was definitely an interesting year for the world. Let’s take the lessons we learned in 2006 and apply them in 2007.

Happy New Year America!!!

Operation Completion.

Those two words sum up a project I have been working on for 7 months now. Operation Completion, a mesage of hope and support to our soldiers and their families. In today’s world Operation Completion isn’t just a statement, its a cause. A cause to say “hey, we don’t care what hollywood and the press say, we support you and we thank you and we just wanted you to know that” It’s a cause to reach out to the military and the relatives in the military and remind America, WE’RE IN A WAR, AND OUR SOLDIERS NEED TO KNOW WE’RE BEHIND THEM!

This kind of goes into taking our freedom for granted. I’ve posted numerous times about how are freedom came at a very high cost and how tend to take it for granted and assume it’s free. The reality is, our freedom isn’t free and the ones that paid the price are under appreciated.

The last rally took place on Saturday, the work put in to it paid off in my oppinion. I have learned so much by working on this project and drawn so much closer to God. I realized over and over again that I can not do this, and in fact, if it weren’t for God the GA rally never would have happened.

I got on board with the project two months after I moved. I knew no one. I brainstormed with a friend of mine for a while until I got the go ahead to go public. Having no contacts I wasn’t sure where to start. BUT GOD. I went to some Republican meetings and events and met people and spoke about Operation Completion. I handed out fliers and got the word out. I ended up with some contacts in the State House, on various campaigns and in my local government. The GenJ club east of me was helping me with phone banking a few weeks before the rally and my GenJ club and State TARS chairman came to the rally to show their support.

All this time, I had no idea on any response, no body got back to me, even with all the followups we made. I had a media lead, and I’m still not sure how that worked. None of our interveiws happened, and we didn’t have a speaker system till the night before.

At 8:30 pm on Friday night, we got a call saying we could rent a speaker system for 250 bucks the next day. Which was totally a God thing since I had been calling up different places seeing if they would let us use a speaker system.

The next day was scheduled to rain, but we didn’t cancel. We woke up early, got the sound system. Came back home, loaded up the van and left. Stage set-up took two hours, then Ashleigh and I decorated it. We still had a few hours to kill before it started, so we discussed logistics and waited, till 30 minutes before.

That was when the capitol police told us that the stage was in the wrong location. So we had -30 minutes to move all of the sound equipment and abandon the stage. Which we did in time,Thank God!!!

Throughout the process of planning in the 7 months time I had been brought to a point where everything was totally out of my hands, and in more than one occasion I just payed ” Ok God, you’ve brought me this far, but I can’t do anything more to make it happen, its all totally in your hands”

And it was. God is awesome, who-ever says he doesn’t have any interest in today is wrong.

We only had a turnout of 75 people, but even though it was a low turnout, these people were dedicated, and came out in spite of the rain just to show support for a cause.

“All things work together for good to those that love the Lord.”

His ways are not our ways, I don’t know why it rained, I don’t know why Reed lost, I don’t know why Operation Completion only had 75 people. But I do know, that I thank God for the people dedicated enough to come out, and I thank God for our soldiers who work 24/7 365 protecting our freedom!

God bless America!!!