New Web-Site

We have moved! We now have a "real" web-site, you can check us out at www.onespringchurch.org. We will be posting all future blog posts there, as well as, updates for the church! Come and visit us!

Where's Your Faith At?

We live in a world where we are taught many different things that are, in the grand scheme of things, inconsistent. Let me give you an example, every year, car manufacturer's come out with a newer model of a vehicle that is supposed to be better in every way than its predecessor or they'll come out with a whole new fleet of vehicles. What car manufacturers and their marketers do is teach the consumers, that what vehicle we have isn't good enough and we need their newest car to make us happy. The car we have now, doesn't have the best gas mileage, the sweetest car stereo, enough horsepower, the outside doesn't look like the Audi R8, you get the picture. You might be asking, what's the point I'm getting at? The point is, is that this world has nothing to offer us that will sustain our joy and happiness. Think about it, every product out there is supposedly better than something else.

Tony Horton, the creator of P90X is known for this extreme workout that will whip your rear end to get you into the best shape of your life. It was a craze, people spent a good amount of money to buy this product to look beautiful. Here's the thing, the product works if you do it correctly. Then shortly after Shaun T created the Insanity workout. This workout is supposed to make P90X look like it's nothing. The body you'll get by doing in Insanity will be better than what you'd get doing P90X. There's always something better out there, telling us that we're never happy with what we have now. The world's beliefs and messages it sends us is inconsistent and will ultimately fail us because it won't meet our expectations.

If you put all of you faith into another person, let's say your boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse, what you're expecting them to do is make you happy. The problem with that was that a human cannot sustain joy that you desire. They will fail you and then you end up resenting them because they haven't done what you've expected of them. That type of thinking will lead to heartbreak, trust me I've been down that road, it doesn't end pretty.

Jesus, on the other hand, the man that lived a life without sin, that came down from heaven, to earth to save a bunch of messed up human beings, by dying on a cross to forgive us for our sins, because we are separated from God, and through His death on the cross we can be reconciled with God. Then three days later, He rose from the grave to prove that He's a savior worth putting our faith and trust in. Here's the thing, He did that all because He loves us (Rom 5:8). Jesus is the way to live a life full of joy, direction, and love. He is the ONLY thing we need (John 14:6). At the end of the day, Jesus Christ is the only one who will never change about anything, His love for us far beyond our understanding, and all He wants is a relationship with us. Jesus isn't after our begrudging submission or our behavior, He's after our joy and our heart. (Ephesians 3:17). When we let go of wanting to be in control of our own lives and let Jesus take over, we'll learn that He won't fail us.

So what do you put your faith in? Is it the ways of the world, where culture teaches us inconsistent things, which are actually lies? Or will you put your faith into Jesus Christ who loves you so much that He doesn't care where you're at in life, He just wants to have a relationship with you, and follow Him. Coming from a 25 year old man who's put his faith into all the wrong things that I thought would make me happy, but ultimately left me feeling more alone, depressed and lost, like alcohol, drugs, and the opposite sex, I can tell you from experience and I tell you the truth, in love, Jesus is the only way.

Exercising Your Spiritual Muscles

After a long and well rested break from blogging, we're coming back with a bang. Hopefully, everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's with family and friends!

This week's blog is going to be about how strong we are and how we can become stronger and closer to Jesus in our every day lives. As some of you know me very well, you know that I LOVE to workout. I mean, I REALLY enjoy working up a sweat, ripping muscles and becoming fit. Some of you think that is probably slightly on the insane side, I say at the end of the day I'll feel 100% better about working hard and trying to be healthy. Working out, in the grand scheme of things, is a pretty simple concept, think about it, the more you exercise (and do them properly) and work on having a healthy eating habit, the stronger you'll become and the better your body will perform in all areas of your life, including immune system. On the other hand, if you never work out, don't really try to practice healthy eating habits, your body's muscles are more weak than they should be, you probably get some love handles and a belly on you, maybe some pudge right there around the triceps, and you're more opt to getting sick and to be injured as well when you do get physical. To me there is nothing more satisfying than seeing my body transform on a weekly basis (sometimes) to reach my goal; which is to have a lean cut body.

The same is also true for my spiritual muscles. If I'm not getting my daily dose of God's word and applying it to my life the best I know how, praying continuously, and even talking to other people about Jesus, whether they are believers or not, my spiritual muscles become weak. Let's unpack this a little bit. Personally for me, I love reading my bible, like, I freaking LOVE reading my bible. There is so much knowledge and wisdom to be taken from it, and Jesus has pretty good sense of humor, dude makes me laugh. I also love reading other books on growing in my faith. I thrive to learn and never want to be complacent in my walk with Christ. When I am CONSISTENTLY reading God's word, actually studying it and applying it to my life, my spiritual life will become stronger, and healthier. If I don't, it becomes weak and I become distant from God. The good news is, you can be as close to God as you want to be. But, there have been times in the past when I hadn't read my bible for a few days, and I noticed things; my attitude was more negative, taking my thoughts captive becomes nearly impossible, I'm almost a different person. I just simply struggled, some of the things that I fight the most, (like lust, along with every other man) became easier to give into. Now when I say fight, I'm saying I don't surrender to whatever sin is in my face at that time. A little hint, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, sexual impurity will harm your relationship with Christ more than you can possibly imagine, trust me.

It is very important to understand that if you want to have an amazing relationship with

Jesus, and other people, the amount of time you spend with Him, the stronger you'll become.

Like any other relationship, you can't get to know someone unless you spend time with them. You're

life will dramatically change the more time you spend pursuing Jesus. Another great way to grow

in your walk with Christ, attend church! The people around you that also love Jesus will have a

greater impact than you might think. If you're feeling distant from God, don't think that you're

supposed to be waiting on Him to blow your mind and life changes drastically. He might be

waiting on you. Know that He WANTS a relationship with YOU! And He is ALWAYS faithful! Allow

His love for you to draw you closer to Him.

Have a great week and I pray ths week's blog has helped! God Bless!

Christmas Service

Our first Christmas service will be this Friday night, December 23, at 7:00. We will be meeting at our usual place, Blue Moon Events Center; however, we will be in a different meeting room, just look for the signs to find the right entrance. This will be our only service this week-end, enjoy Christmas Day with your family.

Please bring a friend! We are expecting great things, it will be an exciting night! It's gonna be a Party!

Fight For Joy!

Depression is a very serious issue, more and more people suffer from it today than ever before. It can be caused my numerous amounts of things, more things than I could probably think of. The one thing I know about depression is this, it's one of the worst feelings you can possibly have, EVER. I went through a deep depression for years as a teenager and partially after that. I would say from the time I hit 7th or 8th grade until my early 20s, (I'm 25 now) I constantly struggled through depression. Everything from feeling completely alone, hated by everyone to not wanting to live anymore. Serious thoughts of suicide occurred twice my freshman year of high school. If you struggle with depression, these are all too familiar for you. It's an awful feeling. The emotional pain and negative thoughts can be unbearable at times.

Don't feel alone in this. The good news is, you can be victorious over it. It may take telling someone that you struggle with it, which is a very difficult step, but believe me when I say that you are a strong person in doing so, and worth it in the future. I didn't overcome my depression overnight. It was years of counceling. Want to know the one thing that defeated my struggle with depression? Jesus Christ. God wants nothing more for His children than to be joyful. To be honest, it's a fight for me still at times. And He did that when He died on the cross for you and me. I mentioned earlier to not feel alone, did you know that Jesus knows every pain and hurt that we go through? He experienced that on the cross. Romans 10:9 says, If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord" and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Making that decision changed my life, forever. And personally, for me, that's the way I fight for joy every single day. Understand that Christ died on a cross for us, to pay for our sins, so that we didn't have to pay for it ourselves. That's love, man (John 3:16). Allow Christ to come into your life, and take over. You'll be overwhelmed with the love that we see on the cross and what Jesus did for us (1 John 4:10).

There are many ways to fight depression, surrounding yourself with people that love Jesus, is a great way. The love and support from people that care about you, (And believe me, if you feel like no one does, there ARE people that care about you) is an incredible way to build you up. Love is a trump card, it dominates everything. Why? Because God is love (1 John 4:16). So for maybe the person that is struggling with depression, your question is maybe where do I find those people? Church is a great start. Try OneSpring Church. If not ours, a church is great place to go. We want everyone to feel comfortable coming to a place where it's OK TO BE JACKED UP! We need Jesus just as much as the next person, we are not better than anyone. And for the person that may know a person dealing with depression and for followers of Christ, we need to love our brothers and sisters (1 John 4:19-21).

Fight for joy, even if it's not depression, maybe it's just a bad day or another struggle, you cling to Jesus. Maybe you've lost a loved one, cling to Jesus. God is faithful (Psalm 91:4), let that be a motivation for you. His love endures forever (Psalm 100:5). Through Christ Jesus, we have victory over anything. My prayer for the person reading this is that you've found hope, or that you've been motivated to help a person in need. A few weeks ago, I talked about taking your next step, what's yours? Maybe it's accepting Jesus Christ into your life. Come talk to us, we'd love to help out and hear your story. Much love! Have a great week!!

Sex Sells Pt. 2

So last week we talked about the dangers of sexual impurity and how it leads to consequences and the joy it can bring by fighting for purity and following Christ. What I want you to know is that last week was not meant to make you feel like a piece of crap if you have struggled in this area of your life, it was meant to give you hope and be challenged to fight to live a life that will not lead to emptiness and pain. Let's face it, no one is perfect, we all have messed up in some way or another, now let's work on standing up, facing those struggles and being victorious over them, in Christ, and ONLY in Christ, can we be victorious. This week I'm going to be transparent with you, yup, you get to know about my past and the pain I've gone through and others when I was not fighting for purity.

It all started in middle school, now most of you can agree, that's when we started noticing the opposite sex right? Well, it certainly was for me, and I was introduced to the infamous porn industry from a fellow student. You guessed correctly, I liked it. Being so young, I didn't know the damage that was going to cause. Eventually I realized I was addicted to it, bondage. Years later in high school, junior year, while still being highly addicted to pornography, I got myself a girlfriend. At age 18, I lost my virginity to her. Oh the nightmare that caused. I'm going to say this with no apologies, sex outside of marriage will screw with your head and your heart. It causes jealousy, insecurities, selfishness, trust issues and a lot more. She always accused me of cheating on her, which caused me to wonder about her too, whether or not she was cheating. I wanted all of my time to be with her (selfish). Leaving out family and friends, which I needed time with them as well. What was the outcome of that relationship? I broke up with her. Right after that, I accepted Jesus into my life and to be my Lord and Savior. But I eventually walked away, partially due to alcohol and drugs, but the thing that hindered my relationship with Jesus? My second girlfriend and I became sexually active as well. Yup, I gave God the middle finger. That's what we do when we disobey His word and commands. We say our way is better and we don't need You. That relationship ended years later, after an incident of us breaking up, then talked about how we wanted to work things out, she still loved me and wanted to be with me, but then come to find she slept with someone else later that week. Talk about having some major trust issues after that.

One girl I was "talking too" for a couple months had told me all of these really sweet things, she wanted to be with me, I was such an amazing guy, blah blah blah. Well needless to say she had gotten me to sleep with her that evening. What happened the next day? She tells me she's moving away to be with her ex boyfriend. I was used. I was tricked. I was devastated. You don't hear guys give that story too much, about how they were used by a female in that manner, but it happened to me. The pain fealt unbearable.

Another lady came along and we went from 0-120mph in about 3 seconds. Translate that into we met, liked each other and hit the throttle on the relationship. Oh, just so you know, I still struggled with pornography at this point, this was late 2010. I was basically living with her a month into the relationship. If that's you, you should probably get out now, and don't tell me that you aren't sleeping together, which there really isn't a whole lot of sleeping going on. Don't lie, no two attractive people can lay next to each other every night and nothing happen. I gave that ridiculous lie too. What a fool I was to think people would believe that crap. Anyways, since we went full throttle into the relationship, it wasnt' long before that relationship ended. See the trend here? There are occasions where people will sleep together and still get married, but why risk the pain and all of the emotional and mental confusion? Pornography, I had to tell someone about that, you CANNOT pray that away, get help, someone who you can trust, a Christian mentor is the best. Pornography destroys the image of females, they have hearts and souls and you look at them as a piece of meat at best. It's wrong and it's lustful. Get help, that means leave your pride in the trash can, take a hit on your reputation and let someone help you break the bondage. I can't tell you the amount of blessings God will give you on top of what you already have by fighting for purity (1 Cor 6:13-15). Put Christ at the center of your life, and everything else falls into place. The reason for me telling you about my past is so that you can see that my ways, didn't work. Pleasing myself was the ultimate goal before I followed Christ, pretty obvious isn't? The emotional and mental damage it caused and the physical consequences it could've caused is too great. I've been hurt greatly in the past because of those decisions I made. I was transparent with you to encourage YOU to do the same, get help, confess and change. It IS worth it, I'm experiencing the rewards as I type this. Fight for the joyful life that Jesus Christ wants us to have THROUGH HIM!!! My prayer is that you understand that what I went through was not the best, it's NOT God's best for us.

I hope you enjoyed the mini series on "Sex Sells", let's get some feedback shall we? Next week is a new topic, it will be on depression. Have a blessed week!!!

Sex Sells Pt. 1

In this day and age, the world screams sex at us. Sex is as normal as eating food through out the day. We see it on TV shows, movies, magazines, hear it in music, even from a lot of our friends. The porn industry is one of the top money making businesses in the world. People have turned sex into something it shouldn't be. In Genesis 2:18-25 we see the first relationship that God created between Adam and Eve. They both had a relationship with God first then God brought Eve to Adam, then they got married, anything out of that order, the relationship gets jacked up, BIG TIME. But in todays world, people claim having sex outside of marriage is ok, it's no longer a big deal. The problem with this is that it IS a big deal. Sex outside of marriage will damage your relationship with Christ (1 Cor 6:8-10), and with the person you're having sex with. Take it from someone who's experienced it. On top of that, God commands us to FLEE from sexual immorality, that means run from it! (1 Cor 6:18). Listen, don't be a fool and ask, "what's sexual immorality?" You know what it is, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to pursue Jesus and be having sex with someone you're not married to (1 Thes 4:2-4). It's not worth it. There are consequences that follow sexual impurity, physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual. You may not believe me when I say that, but trust me, if you're having problems with your boyfriend or girlfriend and you're having sex or sleeping together, whatever the case may be, that's probably the root of the problem. Yes, the world wants us to give in to what "feels good" and to do what we want to do. But when in the heck has that ever lead to great decision? Drinking five whiskey sours will make you feel great for about 10 minutes and then you're more than likely puking and insanely drunk, waking up the next morning feeling like someone swatted you across the face with a bat. Now how do you feel? Oh, can you remember what happened as well? Probably not. Listen, fight the good fight of the faith (1 Tim 6:11-13). Jesus doesn't command us to flee from sexual immorality AND any situation where the temptation might arise for no reason. When you pursue Jesus, you pursue purity, doing both leads to a joyful life. In the latter part of Acts 15:29, we are told we will do well avoiding sexual immorality. When the Bible repeats itself over and over again...it's probably really important to listen and do what it says, why put yourself in bondage? Sexual impurity will leave you empty inside, Jesus is the only thing that can fill us with everything we need. Challenge yourselves by following Christ daily, He never said it was going to be easy. Stay tuned for next weeks blog, I'll be opening up my heart with you and sharing my past, the things that I've done wrong dealing with sexual impurities, how following Jesus Christ has changed my heart, mind and soul. Fight the good fight of the faith!!!