Where should I start? Well, I’ve been blessed. Among everything in my life, I can say I’ve been blessed. I’ve been called by God to take action. To strip everything I’ve known about myself and give it all to him. He’s been jealous for me since as long as I can remember. I remember him tugging my heart when I was in Catholic School asking my Religion teachers about Faith, God, and why we had to memorize prayers to pass class. Later in life I became interested in the real Bible. How the church put it together, I even had a small collection of about 5 or 6 different versions of the Bible. They all had similar teachings, but some didn’t make sense. I like having them to prove that the Bible wasn’t convincing to me. I later heard the Gospel teachings at Young Life an after school program in Salinas. The story was, paraphrasing of course, “If the birds are taken care of, so are You, so don’t worry!” Whoa! Why did  I worry about life? I shouldn’t have, but I did. I lived my own routine, my daily sin of lust, my daily sin of pretending to be good on the outside, but on the inside that’s where I struggled.

An addiction to myself being validated by others played a big roll in my Fall. That’s all I ever wanted was to be ‘Good Enough’. I needed attention. I needed to be acknowledged. So as I grew up, I took lot’s of classes and excelled in them. I played saxophone, played tennis, ran cross-country and track, started to rock climb, etc. (read my earlier blog about my activities) But I need Validation as a person. I sought it from parents, I sought it from brothers and sisters, I sought it from friends, and I’ve even sought it from the women in my life. But I never sought it from God. That’s why my life wasn’t working for me. I had it in my head, that if I do all these things, and I receive validation from it, then I made it happen, I’m a good person, and I am OK. But when the validation isn’t there, I struggled and sought it elsewhere. (A new sport, lustful images, postings on MySpace/Facebook, the list rolls on my friends). I was never taught to seek Validation elsewhere.

I’ve learned to seek it in the Lord! I believe God has our plan mapped out for us, and since he is jealous for us, he will do what ever it takes for us to seek him. I believe he took my surroundings of outdoor sports away, SLC, and the person I was growing in Christ with, Alex, so I could focus only on him, and seek him with out distractions. Yes, to me, those things were distractions.

So where do I stand? I stand in a good place. Is it hard not to hear her voice or see her smile? Sure, or course, I’m only human, I have strong feelings for her. But that isn’t where my focus is right now. 2 Peter 1:3 says this, (paraphrasing to my understanding, you can interpret it in a different way): God has given us everything we need for living a godly LIFE. We first need to SEEK him and KNOW him on a personal level. I am smiling right now! I finally get it. I finally understand. And God has taken care of me, he has always been there tugging my heart. I’ve been a Christian for quite some time now, but my soul and mind hasn’t always been in the right place, so I feel like 1 Peter 1:23, “Born Again” My new Life will last FOREVER. It won’t die, because it comes from the living word of God.” (Which I am craving more and more everyday.) I’m see myself heading in the right direction. Thank God!

Thank you all for your prayers. I found a love that is unconditional and feels so right. God spoke to me and he said, “I know the plans I have for you…They are plans of good and not for disaster, to give you a FUTURE and a HOPE!”-Jeremiah 29:11

So now it time to think of a title for this blog, how about…I don’t feel so good, I feel GREAT!

God Bless. I Love you all!