Sudbury Youth Conference

Hey guys, Kevin here, just thought I would make my first post.

So as you can guess the Sudbury Youth Conference is coming up very quickly, the dates are November 8, 9 and 10th. The speaker this year is Steve Price, if you haven't heard this guy before I welcome and encourage you to come just for the ministry. Now as for activities and what not those are currently up in the air and in the planning process, if you have an idea or something you would like to see happen feel free to suggest it in the comments.

Let me leave you off with a encouragement.

Many Christians go through hardships, trials, and temptation and sometimes we might not see why God has allowed it, or even brought them on (in regards to trials, God does not tempt us to sin). But we need to realize God's plan is for us to be "conformed (made) into the image of His Son (Romans 8:29)." We know God will never leave us nor forsake us (Deut 31:6), and because of these two facts we can take heart in knowing God is building us up, what a joy to be able to be more like Christ! 

Knowing these things, great as they are, sometimes we can still feel helpless and powerless, but let us take a look at 1 Cor 10:13 "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it." Take heart! you are not the first to go through this, God has brought somebody through it before! You have the strength to endure it, and there is always a way out. So if you are stuck in a certain sin that you cannot break, or are suffering through a loss of a loved one, or whatever the circumstances may be, look to God, he has the way out, and will give your strength to finish to the end. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28

And We're Back... Sort of?!

So we are back!

After stumbling upon this old blog and realizing how much I enjoy blogging I decided to ditch tumblr. I'm sure I'll still be on tumblr from time to time. But I will be posting a majority of my stuff here instead of on there from now on. Some of the other bloggers might even start posting here again. Nothing as awesome as before but still something you can read if you get REALLY bored.

On to my actual post.

I have been thinking a lot lately about why do we as Christians feel that we need security? Job security, financial security? You know what I am talking about that feeling where we can do it ourselves.

And I know any good Christian, including myself, have this intellectual idea of dependency down pat and we know what to say and when to say it to make it sound like we rely on God. But by the way we live you can see that we still feel the need to try and fix stuff ourselves. I've messed up on this more then once in my life. HECK! More then once in the the day.

We always feel the need to be in control. I guess handing over the throne of our lives isn't an easy job. I've been reading through Acts lately. Yesterday was Acts 21. The verses that got me yesterday were 12-14 

"When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”

Paul didn't seem to care to much about anything. He gave his whole life to God. It is crazy to think about what he went through and above all of the suffering still have such an amazing attitude.

He didn't care that he might die, or get beat, or have some emotional pain, he just wanted to do Gods will. He lost a lot when it came to serving God. What are we sacrificing to serve God? I can honestly say that my list is pretty short. I'd rather feel good and be happy then serve God, I wouldn't say that I do this and my thoughts wouldn't even think this, but if you looked at my life it would be true. This is my attitude about 90% of my life. Something I need to work on for sure. I have a feeling there are others that need to work on this as well.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:16 "I urge you, then, be imitators of me." And after reading a bunch of the book of Acts this has become a bigger task then I originally thought it was going to be. I think it is something we can all work on.

Nolan Out!

“These men who have turned the world upside down…”

“These men who have turned the world upside down…”


I want people to think this about me. I want to be the person who when people look at me think “Man, that guy is weird.” I mean some already do. I just want them to think that because I am a Christian and they see Jesus in me.

This is my challenge for any one who reads this for the next couple months. Live in a way where people think you are the strangest person.

Do the right thing when it isn't easy.



Don’t watch that movie even if all your friends want to. Don’t listen to that music even if it’s what everyone says is cool. Don’t go to that party even if you get mocked for not going. Read your Bible in public. Do something Crazy like this.

If you take the challenge I’ll support you and pray for you!


Nolan Out!

Spiritual Beings!

No I don’t believe in Aliens. But Demons yes.

As I was doing my reading last night at 1:45am in the morning and the lights were dim and I was all by myself and I think there was a thunder storm. Just setting the scene…

Acts 19:13-16
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

That is what I read. Terrifying isn’t it? It kinda just hit me last night, we live in a world and so do these spiritual beings. I think I’ve always really believed this in my head but not practically living like I believing it

The thing is that I’ve seen some horror movies and other movies where people speak to the demons and stuff and the demons speak back. What I didn’t really believe is that they CAN ACTUALLY speak back. Now I’m not trying to scare anyone. More of just a warn Christians that we need to be praying about these things.

Now another thing I believe is that where we live and in the time we live in seeing or hearing demons likely isn’t Satan’s best weapon to send us astray. If someone says they saw a demon or even an angel, we normally call them crazy or something and move on with our lives. Satan’s best way to detour us North Americans from being a good Christian is convincing us to waste time doing useless things. Personally if I saw a daemon it would push me closer to God. But that is just me.

Now maybe it’s because on the whole North America has really just pushed God and everything Spiritual off to the side and even considered it more of a fairy tail and myths then Truth. Even Christians are guilty of this. We just have explanations for everything because of how “smart” we are. Basically we just explain away things. It was a bad dream, maybe you got high, or possibly you were hallucinating. We are really good at keeping spirituality out of the picture.

Something I’ve heard is that in remote places where technology may not be very wide spread and the knowledge that we have access to in North America isn’t accessible as easily or at all. I’ve heard that there are tons of these demon stories that come from these places. Basically These people would stray away from God if they saw a demon or something. They might even start worshiping it.

Now I don’t really know where I am going with this. But what I do know is that Demons and Angels are as real as God is. And if you say you believe that the Bible is the word of God then you have to believe that these beings are real and are fighting a war around us all the time.

We need to pray for protection. And remember to stay close to God because…

“if God is for us who can be against us”

or…

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Those are Romans 8.


I just think is one more reason we need to rely on God and stay close to him and talk to Him all the time and spend time in his word daily.


Nolan Out.

MY Favorite Song

Yo!

So here is the Dilemma I have been facing lately. My taste in music.

I enjoy a good catchy song as much as the next guy. My taste in music is quite a wide variety. I also enjoy a “gayer” taste in music, at least according to Sam Des.

Another thing is that I really don’t like that much Christian music. I feel as though lots of it is boring and over done. And when something “New” comes out it sounds just like everything else, and isn’t new. Now don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite bands is a Christian band. But on the whole I’m not a huge fan of the Christian music industry. And it is not the lyrics, most of the time they are VERY solid.

This is the Dilemma. I find my music on my phone being mostly secular. Now I’m not saying that all secular music is sinful and wrong. I enjoy jamming out to Taylor Swift just as much as the next girl. But lets be real when it comes right down to it, even her lyrics aren’t that impressive and don’t carry much importance, like 90% of the secular music industry. Actually if the only problem with secular music was that its lyrics were kinda lame I wouldn’t even have a dilemma.

Lately I’ve been listening to the music on my phone and I have found that there are some songs I just can’t listen to anymore. And its not that I don’t love the tunes or anything, its just that the stuff they are singing about isn’t something I think a Christian should be listening to. Now it isn’t going to make me go out and do drugs, get drunk, and have sex. But it certainly isn’t encouraging me to do the opposite.

And who knows where one stray thought can take you. I’ve certainly been dragged down a river of sin because of one stupid thought. So if I can help it, I have been trying to reduce the amount of garbage that goes in, in hopes that the amount of garbage that comes out will be less then it is now.

So in short I have been slowly deleting songs off my phone. Songs I once loved, to my shame, and replacing them with some more meaningful content filled music.

Which brings me to the subject of this post. My current favorite song. Now it certainly makes me feel old to post this but here it is. At least one version of it. Yes its a hymn. Get over it:



"O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above!"

Nolan Out