Quite the Christmas Gift

For the elders and two other special people, here is what we've got!

The Reason I Use Games

When studying for a big test, it has been proven that you can learn words through creating mental pictures or representations of words. Because when remembering, your brain is connecting chemicals to recollect everything you studied. Think of it as a bridge to an island. By memorizing just the words, you create one bridge for each word. By attaching pictures, memories, sounds, or smells to each word, you create a second or third bridge to the same thing. In case your brain cannot remember through bridge 1, bridge 2 is still there.

Now, I say all this just to prove my point. I can teach a whole lesson and it can go in one ear then out the other., but when I throw in a second bridge (a game related to a topic), it brings practical application and a second bridge to remember. Examples work well also, but they are not personal. People remember when you paint a picture and they fill in the scenery. This is why I never pointlessly throw games into my lessons to have fun.

Learning is a fun experience, teaching however is the problem. Therefore, I aim to make the teaching of God's word as fun as possible. I never try to alter the truth, nor do I ever take verses out of context. My class knows there is punishment for wrong. But I try to make them ask why. To make it your own faith, you have to ask why and answer it yourself, I just attempt to guide others to the right answer.

What Happens You Toss Coffee

I have to clean it up -_-

Dullas Trip Photos

I'm hoping to have all photos of the Dullas Air and Space Museum trip up this week! If you have any photos to upload, inform me and we can put them up!

The Effects of Selfishness

This was a college essay I had to do. So, it's got Biblical principles, but it not inherently a Bible lesson.

Greedy politicians eager for power, obsessed corporations always striving towards gathering and collecting more precious, cold, hard cash, and the five year old who refuses at all costs to share his box of one-hundred crayons with the child who forgot to bring his that day are all perfectly accurate results of the terrible act of selfishness. Through this awful mindset of selfishness, bloody and relentless wars have started, men and women have lost their jobs by their coworkers through dishonest gain, and countless friendships have broken or never even began. Any person can fall prey to its subtle hands of malice, so a being must constantly be vigilant to try and make this world better through selflessness. Selfishness causes a large plethora of problems and issues and can produce many varying actions such as greed, violence, and unhappiness.
    The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines greed as; “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed” and greed most certainly cannot exist without a strong presence of selfishness abounding. Although the excess of whatever they desire, whether the object be money, drugs, or possessions, the over abundance can ultimately cause problems with the person mentally, physically, and emotionally. Greed often leads down the path of inhumanely taking from those who need whatever the object is. For example, during the Industrial Revolution, business giants like Carnegie and Rockefeller did not support their company’s workers with the money a family needed for living. Through business leader’s greed, they selfishly deprived the average man of good living standards and caused many horrible deaths through malnutrition, disease, and produced more selfish people who would murder others to sustain their own life. These facts, without a doubt, stemmed through the businessmen’s inconsideration of the common man – in other words, their selfishness.
    Within the Bible, the book of James states in chapter four, verse one “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?” How true of a statement that is, selfish desires can also produce hefty amounts of bloodshed and violence. When your own desires begin to command your thoughts and actions, we think of nothing but fulfilling those desires. This self-centeredness can cause a person to adapt a very dangerous, “by any means necessary” attitude. The selfish desire could include a good cause (such as a dying relative who needs money for treatment), but when emotion takes grip and someone stands in the way, fighting or even bloodshed is the inevitable outcome. Therefore, through selfishness, a well-meaning country who’s only goal is to restore itself to stability and former glory can ignore the lives and opinions of other countries neighboring it; I am, of course, talking of Nazi Germany. World War Two began due to the selfish ambition of the people of restoring itself, all the while subtly sowing the seeds for conquest and a war that would involve most of the modern world.
    Finally we come to unhappiness and how selfishness permeates even our happiness, joy, and contentment with life. An obvious reason why selfishness can effect happiness is the unavoidable factor of not being liked. By demonstrating selfish actions, people begin to realize that, the one only satisfying their own needs cannot possibly care for others. Just as important and most certainly more probable, selfishness inevitably harms happiness through the fact that everything done becomes a rigorous and lonely battle. For example, a worker looking for a promotion can focus singularly on work to gain that promotion; however, the work environment most often requires a willingness of varying degree to perform with other coworkers and superiors. By demonstrating a lack of care about another worker, one might be deemed unworthy for the promotion due to the lack of “people skills.” Want happiness certainly is not inherently selfish, but it most certainly can become selfish through the paths chosen to pursue it. Often times, those pursuing happiness through selfish ways lose sight of other’s happiness and, therefore, lose a set goal for their own happiness.
    Selfishness, as demonstrated in the above paragraphs, can influence one’s very way of thinking and drastically alter their lives in severely negative manners. This behavior can destroy anything from another person’s ways of existence through greed, to other nations through violence, and even an individual’s happiness though lack of concern of fellow mankind. The only way to ever combat the atrocities committed on all forms of scales, large as well as small, is to counteract them through simple random acts of selflessness. Selflessness can bring a simple smile to brighten someone else’s day, which can produce more selfless deeds by them, creating a web of good actions stemming from a simple, genuine smile. In the end, selfishness causes more harm to a person than good, so why do we do it? I would like to conclude that human desires will always attempt to take the best of a man, woman, or child; however, it is actually thinking of ourselves that hurt us most.

Goofy Church Picture

Our Turkey! Happy Thanksgiving! Some time early =)

Stumbling Blocks

Isn't it funny how, when we're caught up in our own crazy opinions and ways, we cause the less firm in their faith to falter and, at times, fall away? It's crazy some of the points that cause fights that I see occurring within churches. Are we not called to not create dissension and divisions?

Titus 3:9-11 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless. ¹⁰ Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. ¹¹ You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.

Why then do we cause such a great stir and fight about something that there is no true answer for? All of this said applies to much greater issues, that is why I am so fervently expressing my beliefs. However, our topic of class was about Halloween. We did not, through our discussion condemn nor support the celebration of this holiday, and that will be my goal once more - to not impose my beliefs. Since both sides are because of opinion, the main focus of this lesson is stumbling blocks.

Although the entire chapter of Romans 14 is marvelous on this topic, I will try my hardest to limit to only a few verses for short reading.

Romans 14:1-5

Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. ² One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. ³ The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. ⁴ Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

 ⁵ One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 

Romans 14:13-14

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. ¹⁴ I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. 

Romans 14:22-23

So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. ²³ But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. 

Do I even need to elaborate? If something I do can cause a brother or sister to stumble, I will do it in private or give it up even if the thing is not inherently wrong. We are a family, and families must make sacrifices for the good of everyone. Unless someone is committing a sin that is not disputable if it was a sin, we are not to condemn nor judge. Let God do this, for it is his job. For further reading, please read

1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14