National Treasure: Book of Secrets Review

Well, after a little bit of down time, I’m back up on the blog with some different stuff. As I mentioned in the last post, I’m going to start posting some “thoughts” on some more things… news, movies, tech, whatever.

Just saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets tonight. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The title itself and the trailer had me thinking they should’ve stopped with the first movie. It seemed to me like it was going to be one of those cases where the original was a bigger hit than expected and the production company tried milk it for all its worth with a sequel. Typically the sequel has a rough plot line, a terrible ending, and basically bombs. However, in this case I was impressed. While I still hold that the first movie is better, National Treasure: Book of Secrets kept my attention and was surprisingly interesting and entertaining. It carried a deeper storyline than I expected and had a little bit of a twist at the end. Of course it was good to see the original cast back as well. Just take this movie for what it is (a fictional adventure) and it will be an enjoyable attention grabbing film. The writers even led the audience to believe that there will be a third, which I now would be much more excited to see.

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Blog news...

So I've decided to start including some news and other interesting things on my blog. It's basically just going to be a place for my thoughts to be out there for you to read. Hopefully you all will find some of this stuff interesting and profitable. I'd love to get some feedback!
~joseph

A believer.

II Corinthians 6:3-10
"3We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7 by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything."

Whatever you do...

Just another quick thought from my quite time…

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”

This command in Colossians 3:23 is huge! Basically what this verse is saying is that in anything and everything you do, you must (it’s imperative… a command) do it “as for the Lord.” Just thinking about this alone makes me realize how important each decision is. EVERYTHING I do I must be doing for the Lord, it must glorify Him and make His name great! That alone is big!
Just as I sat down to write this and started thinking more about it, I was reminded of a passage I studied a while ago that relates to this in a very key way. In Psalm 96 the Psalmist writes, “Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength! Ascribe to the LORD the GLORY DUE HIS NAME…” In my study of this passage I read a commentary by Spurgeon called “The Treasury of David.” In this commentary, Spurgeon talked about how we as sinful humans can never give God all the glory “due his name.” We can’t give Him enough! So, Spurgeon went on to say, since we can never give God all the glory He deserves, we should constantly be striving in EVERYTHING to give God all the glory we can! It must be constant… it can never stop!
So… All this to say, since we can never give God all the glory He deserves, we can also never do enough for Him… We, as followers of Jesus, have to constantly be making choices, going “out of our way” to advance the cause of Christ, to do all things for HIS glory!

Alive!

In my recent study of God’s Word I came to Colossians 2:13 which in my ESV Bible reads,

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,”

I love the phrasing of this verse. It’s so blunt. You can’t miss the truth that it presents. “And YOU who were DEAD…” It’s us, human beings that have made ourselves dead. Why are we dead? Read the next phrase: “…in YOUR TRESPASSES…” We are dead because of sin. The sin of one man, Adam, has brought sin and the curse upon the entire human race. We are born in sin and WE can’t do anything about it. We can’t deny it, in our earthly state, we are dead, and WE can do nothing to change that. WE are DEAD!
This seems pretty hopeless right…
Keep reading… there are 3 miraculous, awesome words in this verse, 3 words that changed the course of history: “…GOD MADE ALIVE…” Awesome! We as HUMANS are DEAD, LOST, and CONDEMNED, BUT, GOD has made us ALIVE! How? Again… keep reading. “…having FORGIVEN OUR TRESPASSES.” He forgave us. Those sins that condemned us are gone FOREVER! We, AS CHRISTIANS, are no longer DEAD in our SIN! Because of the GRACE and MERCY of GOD we are made ALIVE! WE ARE FORGIVEN!!!

Glory be to God!

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:…For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.”

Yesu (A World Vision Child)

It’s funny how God time’s things. Thursday night I was at family bookstore when a completely foreign thought occurred to me. I was standing at the counter as we were checking out when a stack of World Vision child sponsorship folders caught my eye. World Vision is a ministry that reaches out to poverty stricken cultures all around the world. Through individual child sponsorship World Vision seeks to change the lives of poverty stricken people all throughout the world.
The thought popped into my head… “man, I’d really like to sponsor one of those kids.” It had never occurred to me to take action in child sponsorship before. Sure I’d seen the advertisements before, but I never really thought about doing it myself. But of course I talked myself out of it because, “I didn’t have a steady enough income to commit to a monthly payment.”
Last night (Friday), I got to go to a Casting Crowns concert. It was a great concert and a great night all together. As I was walking in, I saw a World Vision table set up, and again the thought popped into my head, “wow, I really wanna do that.” So of course… I went in and sat down to enjoy the concert. Right about in the middle of the night Casting Crowns gave a testimony to what World Vision is all about. Casting Crowns as a band and as individuals are very involved with World Vision. They proceeded to tell us about one of the main focuses of World Vision. World Vision seeks to bring clean water to dry villages. Many women and children in these dry villages spend the vast majority of every day walking an average of five miles to get water for their family. By bringing clean water to the village, the children would be able to attend school, which means that as they grow they would be knowledgeable enough to learn a trade and provide for their families. There were two things that Mark Hall (the lead singer of Casting Crowns) said that made my decision. “With World Vision we will see a whole culture change in one generation,” and, “they're not ‘ministry opportunities’ they’re people.” WOW, this was convicting!
Anyway, all this to say that last night I had the awesome opportunity to adopt a young Indian boy named Yesu Babu! I surrendered to God. Oh me of little faith! I’m excited to be a part of this young boys life and to pour the love of Christ on him. When I surrender God will provide.
Please join me in praying for Yesu Babu and his family! Through the Church the world will be changed! Glory be to God!