Competition

We go harder and do better when we have competition, it is human nature. No one can deny this fact. My personal experience is going from 5 to 14 pull ups, running a mile in the top 5 when I cannot run an entire mile. (At the time I couldn't) However, just like anything else, competition can be both good and bad.

So, in sports, games, or anything, when is competition bad? Obviously competition is bad when people cheat, when people play dirty, when they play unnecessarily rough. No one wants to play with a cheater.

Competition in the church is more like example and encouragement.

Q: Ken Hoover sets an excellent example for us all, and I wish I could be more like him and even smarter one day; this is competition. Is it wrong?
A: No, so long as I don’t become resentful of his knowledge or hostile towards him.

When is competition good?

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (ESV) Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Philippians 2:1-4 (ESV) So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others

 This lesson was most definitely short, but my mind is not all here today. So please forgive.

My Sister Got Baptised!

=D
If she reads this, she will kill me.

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.